Eidolon
by Emmy the Writer
Summary: Dr. Natsuki Kruger is in a dangerous position: a human in the Otherworld, where dangerous creatures roam in the darkness. While elves are being murdered and conspiracies are thick in the air, the enigmatic siren Shizuru Viola plays her games. ShizNatNao
1. The Asset

Hi guys! Well, I know I'm a bit shitty at carrying out a fic to the end (a la Chosen, At the Point of her Dagger, okay, pretty much every fic but two that I've ever written on this site), but I'm trying to change. This is my fresh new offering to you all, something a little different.

I would like to warn you that I'm dropping a few F-bombs but keeping this rated T, so you are welcome to complain or skip this altogether if you're offended by that. The premise of this story is basically that I wanted to take all the wonderful ideas of Mai HiME vampires, demons, werewolves, etc, and melt them together into a big supernatural fondue with lots of new aspects.

I'd also love if readers have a particular mythological being/entity they'd like to see in this fic, leave a review and I'll check them out. I haven't assigned all the characters to beings yet, so I'm open to ideas.

So please review, drop a line and tell me if you like it, if it shows promise, whether you'd like me to continue it. Have a good read! (And I don't own Mai HiME, just to clarify)

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><p>Chapter One: The Asset<p>

Every time somebody called out "Doctor Kruger!", Natsuki winced, still. It just wasn't her; her mother must be turning in her grave, somewhere.

She'd been a Foundation One doctor at Fuuka General Hospital for a couple of weeks now, ferreting around behind the obstetrics consultant she'd been assigned to, and still she felt responsibility already settling on her shoulders. She had to run a load of tests that she couldn't remember the names of on a list of hundreds of pregnant women of varying… pregnantness. It was stressful, it was disorientating, and she'd never admit it was everything she'd ever dreamed of when she'd opened that letter seven years ago.

Natsuki sighed, hitched her glasses back up her stubby nose and made a face at the urine sample she was carrying. Of all the departments she could have been assigned to, obstetrics and gynaecology was not her first choice. Her best friend Chie had lucked out and was spending her first six months in A&E, and had text her on their third day to say she'd just amputated someone's right foot. Natsuki at the time had been examining a heavily pregnant forty-four year old woman's lady-bits. Glamorous, she thought bitterly, but hey, she was here, in Fuuka, doing medicine, just as her mother had asked. She felt fulfilled. But she really did want to amputate someone's limbs at some point too.

"Dr. Kruger, are you going to stare at that urine sample all day?"

Her head snapped up. "No, Dr. Nielsen. I'm just transfixed by the particular shade of vermillion."

"If you've got time to be smart with me, you've got time to check Mrs. Jones' medication out of the pharmacy." Natsuki groaned. The Pharmacy was like, three floors away. "And be back in time to insert Miss Lowe's urinal catheter."

She flipped him off to his back and strode off through the hospital. Most people knew to get away from a pissed-looking junior doctor, probably one doing a menial and unflattering job, but there were the occasional clusters that didn't know better (junior doctors callously referred to the visiting families or friends of patients as 'clusters', because they tended to feel alienated and nervous in a hospital and bunch together, shuffling around like a giant eight-legged race).

The main Pharmacy was three floors down in the adjoining building, so Natsuki had a bit of a trek before she made it across, smoothing her white lab coat down and nervously touching her stethoscope. The Pharmacy guys were not exactly chummy at the best of times.

"Morning." She tried to appear unfazed. "I need the medication assigned to this woman."

She slid the file across the counter at the grumpy-looking pharmacist, who scanned it, tore out a sticker from Mrs. Jones' file and disappeared into the cavernous back room, re-emerging with a paper bag full of different boxes. He pushed it back at her and wordlessly demanded her signature on the sign-out form.

I love you too, she thought, patting herself down for a pen. She kept losing pens. Either someone asked for one and then never gave it back, or she left it somewhere. Finally, she found one in the inside pocket of her coat and scrawled her name. "Thanks."

He grunted. The pharmacists were wonderful people.

On the way back, Chie paged her, a number code she knew meant that Chie was taking a break and was inviting Natsuki to take hers too. She paged back negative. Then Dr. Nielsen paged her to ask where she was (Mrs. Jenkins' waters had broken! Oh very dear…), so she sighed and continued with her day.

Two catheters, a birth (a boy, if you were wondering) and some fluctuating blood pressures later, Natsuki collapsed on a bench outside the back of the hospital with Chie, taking her fourth break of the day.

"I wish I was doing A&E," she grumbled, fiddling with her lighter. "I've seen enough vaginas today to put me off women."

"Nice visual." The well-known womaniser chuckled, texting at the same time. "It's great and stuff, but so tiring. That's why I get all these breaks."

"I suppose." They sat in silence. "Have you picked where you're doing your extra contribution hours?"

"Walk-in clinic." She winced. "Dull but unstressful. Oh, they're seeing each other!"

"Hmm?"

"Midwife and a consultant. What've you chosen?"

"Dunno." She scratched her head. All junior doctors had to do extra contribution hours on top of their normal hours, as part of a community improvement scheme. "I thought about geriatrics."

Chie's made a face. "Don't. Old people are horrible. Go to the mortuary."

"Dead people?"

"They need a 'consulting clinician'. Kenta from the ICU told me that he did it last year, and they never called on him at all. Basically it's an honorary job to keep the medical council happy. You should apply."

Natsuki's innate laziness, something she'd worked hard to suppress in medical school, washed pleasantly over her when she received this news. "Nice. Whom do I apply to?"

"Dr. Helene in pathology." Chie said, and then added as an afterthought, stubbing out her cig on a wall. "I would."

"You would tap anything, Chie."

"Your redhead has you on too tight a leash." She replied with a cheeky smile, standing up. "Well, I'm going to get back in now."

"But I have another fifteen minutes!"

"Sucks to be you, Natsuki." Chie disappeared through the back door, leaving Natsuki outside, unamused. She looked at her phone, seeing three texts from Nao that she hadn't answered and a missed call from the garage. And a threatening email from her landlord, too, for good measure. Brilliant. Well, she might as well go and secure the easy job with Dr. Helene.

But she had to find the way to Pathology first. Shit.

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><p>"I'm home!" Natsuki shouted as she slammed the already splintering door of her apartment closed and dumped her bag in the hall. "Oi, Nao?"<p>

"Don't have an aneurysm, I'm coming." The woman in question appeared out of the master bedroom, hopping while trying to get her tights off. "Good day?"

"Alright." Natsuki shrugged off her coat. "You?"

"Governor up my arse again. You'd have thought the election was fucking tomorrow." Nao sidled up behind her. "You'd better get more than that lab coat off, doggy."

"Ruff, ruff." Natsuki growled as Nao's arms encircled her and started to unbutton her shirt. "I have some notes to write up."

"I have some speeches to write." Nao replied, "But that doesn't stop me."

Natsuki smirked and allowed her shirt to be pulled off. It was times like these she was glad of Nao's presence in her life- when they were on good terms. They'd lived together since forever, or at least their first years of college, and they'd been many things. Friends, enemies, a couple, friends with benefits, in an open relationship, you name it, they'd tried it. At the moment it was very couple-y, but she knew it would change once they had an argument. Oh well, she thought: Stop thinking, Natsuki, and take your knickers off. Good girl.

_Be-Beep!_

Her pager went off.

"Fuck."

"No." Nao gripped her as she reached for the annoying little electronic thing clipped to the skirt that had found its way onto the sofa during the flustering removal of clothing that had preceded this interruption. "If you answer your pager, you naughty girl, I'm going to-"

_Drrrrr, drrrrr._

Nao's blackberry vibrated on the kitchen counter.

"Fuck."

"Now who's the workaholic?" Natsuki smirked, finding the pager with her toes and trying to pull it towards herself. She checked the number. She didn't recognise it, but that meant that it was probably quite important. "It's probably quite important." She said.

Nao reached behind her and nearly overbalanced trying to reach the counter. "Can we let go of each other?"

"I had to get my pager with my feet, you can bloody well get your phone with your hands." To make the point, Natsuki held tighter onto Nao's remaining arm. "Or we could forget your phone?"

"If you forget your pager."

They looked at each other. "We're not going to, are we?"

"Nope."

"Ah well." They detached and went to their respective devices. "Ooh, the governor has a last minute invite to a charity dinner tonight and needs me to escort him because he doesn't know shit about anything."

"Did he write that?"

"No, but it's implicit in the pleading tone of the text." Nao smoothed out her fiery hair and texted him back while trying to button up her suit at the same time. "You?"

"Dunno, I don't recognise the number." She called up the extension provided and waited. "Hello?"

"_Hello? Dr. Kruger? This is Youko Helene from Pathology_."

"Uh, hi again."

"_Would you mind coming in? We need you to look at something._"

She distinctly remembered Chie promising that Kenta from the ICU had said that she wouldn't have to do anything. Ah, well. "No problem, give me twenty minutes."

"_Thanks, Dr. Kruger._"

She hung up. "No fucking problem. Nao, I'm back to the hospital."

"I'm off to a charity dinner." She replied haughtily. "How to dress, hmm?"

"Well, for you it's a choice between dangerously slutty or… sluttily dangerous."

"I'm feeling dangerously slutty tonight." They made their way to the bedroom so Nao could pick dresses out of her wardrobe and Natsuki could change out of her rumpled clothes into fresher, more: 'yes, I had a life before you paged me' clothes.

"Right, I'm off, have a great night." Natsuki gave Nao a little kiss before flying out of the apartment, just managing to grab her keys before skidding into the stairwell. She grumbled, looking accusingly at her pager while she ran down the stairs. The mortuary didn't creep her out that much, but still, she'd rather not spend her Wednesday night there. Then again, dead people didn't answer back, which was brilliant. She hoped this was a one off to sign some forms or something, because she didn't fancy coming back in every night to poke a corpse for a bit. Surely the pathology people could do that?

She slipped into the residents' garages and unchained her bike, her petrol-guzzling, far-too-loud, always-breaking, second-hand piece of shit of a motorcycle. She'd always wanted a nice new one, but the chances of that were slim, seeing as how she was trying desperately to pay back her student loans and keep up with rent, _and _cope with the fact that the local cheap-o supermarket was being replaced by a more expensive, upmarket one. Meh. She hopped on her scum-bucket (her affectionate nickname for the bike) and started it up after several tries, eventually exiting the garage with several vicious plumes of black smoke. Natsuki coughed through the cloud and made another mental note to give up smoking that she'd forget in a couple of hours.

It was only a short drive from her apartment to Fuuka hospital, so she was striding into the path labs fifteen minutes later. Natsuki didn't much like the path labs, because they were brown and cluttered and smelled of coffee. Below them, the mortuary was cold and creepy and smelled of formaldehyde. In a kind of mixture of these two environments, the pathologists smelled of coffee and were creepy. Well, Dr. Helene was all right, as far as pathologists went.

"Dr. Kruger; thanks for coming in." Youko appeared beside her, clipboard in hand. "Follow me?"

They went down the cold, cold steps into the cold, cold mortuary, and Natsuki felt… chilly. The grimy yellow lights reflected off the rows of stainless steel fridge-cabinets that lined the wall. In the middle of the dank room, an examination table was prepped and ready for someone. Youko strode over to one of the fridges and began explaining the problem.

"Generally, mortuary work is pretty dull. Not much happens that a pathologist can't deal with. But yesterday we got two bodies in that don't quite… compute. I thought maybe I've been in path too long and I'm not up to date on the latest clinical stuff, so I asked you to come take a look."

"Right." Natsuki got her glasses out to take a look at the file Youko had handed her. The pathologist meanwhile decanted two corpses onto the exam tables. "Sorry, Dr. Helene, these figures make no sense."

"Exactly." Youko ushered her over. "This is Shiho Huit. High Schooler. Suicide." The cloth came off to reveal a thin, childish-looking teenager with crazy hair. "And this is Joseph Greer. Accountant. Suicide."

"Two suicides? Are they linked?"

"Not that we can see. Forensics were in and out."

Natsuki scratched her head, looking at their figures. "Dr. Helene, their figures aren't… wrong. They're normal. Just in different proportions… the bloodwork comes up as a direct antithesis to human ratios."

Youko's eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"Yeh." Natsuki took her eyes off the messed-up file and took a look at the two bodies. "So their blood is weird. That can happen a while after death, right?"

"No."

"Damn." The junior doctor put on a pair of gloves and examined Joseph Greer. "Anything else?"

"Look at the file."

Natsuki reopened the file. "Ah. Dr. Helene, why have you written in the comments box: _human?_"

"Well, I took a look at some of their antibodies and antigens. They don't stain correctly. At least, normal, where human antigens stain, those of the same type in these two don't. I can't think of anything, Dr. Kruger. I'm way out of my depth."

"Right." Natsuki looked, perplexed and baffled at the figures on the file, trying to remember diseases that could cause a change in antibody… ness.

"I've got to go and run some tests now, but I hope you'll have some luck where I didn't." Dr. Helene said from where she was already disappearing up the stairs.

"Oi!" Natsuki shouted behind her, but to no avail. "Ugh!"

She slumped down, her elbows on the side of the examination table. "Mr. Greer, what the fuck are you?"

He opened his eyes and stared at her.

"Fuck!" Natsuki launched herself back against the wall, her heart drumming in her chest. It must have just been that the setting hadn't been done very well, she told herself. No, he was blinking. And looking around. His nose was wrinkling. He licked his lips. Groaning, he sat up. A dead man sat up. Natsuki suppressed an urge to urinate. Fuck.

"Urgh…" Greer grumbled, rubbing his eyes. "Jesus, what a night."

"Um." She mumbled something and he looked at her searchingly. "Hi. Mr. Greer."

"Father Greer." He corrected absently, looking down at himself. "Could I get something a little more than a modesty cloth?"

"Ah." She unfroze and for an absurd minute searched around for some clothes for him, coming back with some cords and a woolly jumper. "Here you go."

"Fantastic." He stood, stretched and yawned. "Right. So, you are?"

"Dr. Natsuki Kruger."

"Stellar." Greer scratched his chin. "It's never been you before. Has dear Kenta quit?"

Kenta from the ICU who'd used to work here. The name clicked in her mind and Natsuki became more apprehensive. So Kenta had witnessed this before, and had been fine with it. So Kenta had been talking about how easy this work was. So, therefore, Kenta had wanted Chie to come down here and see Father Greer come back to life. What the fuck?

"Uh, yes. I've got Kenta's old job."

"Then he's briefed you?"

"Uh… of course. Yeh. Sorry, he probably left some bits out."

He snorted. "I can tell you're scared. But what are you? I mean, Kenta was an Ankou, perfect for this kind of duty, which is great and all, but lacking variety, you know?"

"Ah- um, yes, I totally understand." Natsuki lied, very confused. Okay, she thought, let's break this down. Dead, not-human man gets back up, appears to know an ICU doctor who is also not human, then asks me what sort of non-human I am. Right. So, if I want to know what the fuck is going on, I should flow with it. And hope that whatever non-human I say I am actually exists.

After this mental soliloquy, Natsuki gulped and answered him. "I'm a- uh, werewolf?"

"Ah! Yes, yes, I see. Are you with the Aswald pack? How is your Alpha doing?"

"Uh, fine?"

"Then he recovered from that nasty silver arrow! Wonderful. You know, the court came down hard on the selkie that did it. Of course you'd know that, what am I saying? I'm always a little hazy after I feed."

Natsuki gulped. Something was very wrong here. "Feed?"

"Kenta didn't tell you? Vampire." He held out his hand and she shook it gingerly, feeling his cold fingers. "I suppose you get all sorts down here. That was very good acting, by the way. With Dr. Helene. I believed you didn't know what was going on. A little sloppy though, but you're new, it's excusable."

What have I go myself into? She thought.

"Right. Sorry. First day and all."

Greer nodded and stretched again, looking back at Shiho. "Ah, to be young and sleepy. Then again, she's a lamia, so she's probably drank a hell of a lot more than an old conservative like me."

"Yeh, I get that a lot." Okay, now she was going too far with this. "I mean, I've heard of that happening a lot."

"Isn't it always? And the succubi, too. Can't take a little, always have to suck a guy dry. But anyway, the night is young, and I have to sign back in with the council otherwise I'll lose my licence."

"Your licence?"

"Yes, my consumer's license. You need one if you're an energy-taker like me or this lovely lamia. Don't suppose you've ever had to apply, being a werewolf." He replied, picking blood out from under his fingernails. "Anyway, must be going."

"Have a good… night." She started as he banged on one of the columns of corpse-fridges and it was revealed as a large door into a dank underground passage. He gave her a smile and disappeared behind it, shutting the fake door as he did so. Natsuki was left stunned and quite frightened for her life.

"Shit." She sank down into a sitting position across from the exam table. "I've gone mental."

What should she do? What had gone wrong? Dr. Helene must notice that Fr. Greer committed suicide every couple of weeks. It didn't fit. That just didn't fit.

She opened up her phone and dithered over calling someone. Nao was in her charity dinner. Chie would be with a girl now. Who did she have left?

"Excuse me." An eerie, sultry voice enquired from the entrance to the morgue. "Who might you be?"

Natsuki looked up into a pair of very dangerous, very non-human eyes. Deep, deep red, resonating in tiny, almost unnoticeable circles of umber and crimson, subtle refractions of strange colours that still appeared red, like green and purple and at the same time a pure, blinding black pupil that throbbed and laughed and did a thousand other things in a single second. Natsuki's mouth went dry and her ears were filled with the thrumming of a thousand instruments, a hundred notes in pure harmony. She couldn't even see a face, just eyes, the rest of her mind somewhere else. Suddenly she wanted to tell the eyes who she was and that she didn't know anything at all but the corpse was walking and what would become of her and Nao and…

Abruptly something within her snapped and she crumpled to the floor, unaware that she'd even stood up at all. Breathing heavily, Natsuki scrambled up, grasping for purchase on the exam table. She turned and looked at the intruder. A young woman- a hot young woman- was standing in a dark coat at the entrance, her head cocked and a confused look on her wonderful face. "My, hello little song-breaker."

Natsuki trembled, thoroughly pissed off at how weird stuff was getting. She bit her lip, circling around the back of the exam table warily. "Hello yourself, little… thingy."

She smiled mockingly. "How unfortunate that you'd find yourself here, seeing what it is you have seen. I'm afraid that, like the lovely Dr. Helene, you'll have to forget this." Then, the non-human woman's face frowned. "Though you broke my song. I dislike that; if you do it again, we are in trouble."

"I'm… sorry?" Natsuki blurted out, her cheeks heating up. "I really don't understand anything. I won't tell anyone."

"Ara, I'm afraid we can't do that." She slowly stepped down the stairs, sauntering, low and casual like a predator. Then again, Natsuki thought in terror, she probably was a predator. All of these non-humans probably were. "Though I'd like to know who I'm about to kill."

"Um, no thanks." Natsuki's heart hammered the inside of her ribcage. "Though, yeh, go right ahead, I'm Natsuki, nice to meet you."

"What a lovely name." the woman replied. "Kanin na, it is just our way. Your associates can be made to forget that you ever existed. " She smiled humourlessly. "I am very practiced at that."

"Sorry, I'd rather not die in the first place." Natsuki looked around for a weapon. Not that she thought she could help it if the woman began doing that singing mind-control thing again. The exam table had a drawer below it with a load of scalpels in. Okay, that was a start. Her aim was all right. As soon as the un-human woman made a move, she'd get a scalpel in the eye. Yeah. Go team 'what the fuck is going on?'!

"I'm afraid that is not possible. Now, this can be easy, or I can take you into the council for them to declare you a liability to otherworld safety and have you executed."

Field trip to the council it is, then!

"Is there any way I could be charged not guilty?" she tried lamely.

The woman considered, her elegant eyebrows rising. Natsuki took a moment to admire her perfectly sculpted beauty, the sharp, defining lines of her face and their contrast to the neat curves of her body. Guilty and dragging herself back to the situation, she took a breath and reached into the drawer, feeling confident in the cold steel of the scalpel. The woman finally smiled. "Perhaps if Natsuki proved herself an asset more than a liability, the council president could override the laws in place."

"That's great. Because I'm a massive asset. You know, in some circles they call me Dr. Natsuki 'The Asset' Kruger? True story."

"You are babbling. That, my little song-breaker, is not a quality that an asset should possess." She stepped closer. "And apologies for my rudeness. I am Shizuru Viola, Otherworld Council President."


	2. She Gave me a Ring

Thanks for all the positive feedback! I decided to put chapter two up for you guys now so you can get into it a bit or have a bit more to go on if you're judging this. Have a great read! :)

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><p>Chapter Two: She gave me a ring<p>

The night was young when Natsuki entered the mortuary; now, after the tumultuous onslaught of information and danger, she felt like she was emerging into a different world. Shizuru had taken her calmly through the secret door, a threatening smile enough to keep the junior doctor quiet. The passage was dank and dingy, roughly-hewn rock walls supported by decaying wooden beams. It looked as though the passage definitely predated the hospital. Natsuki felt herself get colder and colder as the rational world receded and she was faced with the reality that vampires and werewolves and whatever an Ankou or a lamia was actually existed. Oh very dear. It was all going to pot.

"Well, for one so previously vociferous, you are mightily silent, Natsuki." Shizuru said, her voice echoing along the slippery corridor. "Natsuki is welcome to ask whatever she pleases."

"Ah, but if I ask the wrong thing you'll kill me." She replied mock-happily.

"True." Shizuru replied lightly. "But nevertheless, ask away."

"What are you?"

"Ara, quick off the bat." The woman smiled. "My race has many names, though you may call us sirens."

"Like in greek myths?"

"Similar."

"Is Fr. Greer really a… vampire?" she asked.

Shizuru's lips twitched. "Why yes, he is. And an unfortunately indulgent one at that. He leads a the opposition party of our government, of which the council is merely a facet. He is… a roadblock."

"Why not kill him? You seem fine with it in general."

"He is one of us. He has rights."

Brilliant, Natsuki thought. If I'm an unfortunate human doctor just trying to skive my extra duties, I'm expendable, but if I'm a merciless rambling vampire priest, it's okay: I've got _rights_. "Do I have any rights?"

Shizuru paused, taking one of the forks of the tunnel. "As a human, no."

"Awesome. So I'm dead unless you like me."

"Yes."

"Do you like me?"

Shizuru grinned. "I have not decided yet. And even if I did, I am no guarantee."

"What?"

"I can override the law, but our law doesn't go far enough to aid humans. If you were to be charged with anything more that what our only law applicable to humans covers, I could not do anything. Natsuki should be worried."

"Natsuki is worried enough, thank you."

"There is, of course, a way to circumvent this." Shizuru said suddenly after several cold minutes of walking, with the mould and the metallic smell of blood become stronger, underpinned by the thick, volatile feeling of magic that Natsuki couldn't place but was sure she recognised.

"Of course. I could just top myself now and save the goon squad the trouble."

"Sarcasm does not befit an asset."

"Right boss." Natsuki bitterly replied, dread coiling in her stomach. "What's your idea then?"

"If you cease being human, you gain otherworld rights."

"But I like being human." She protested. "I really like it."

"Do you?" Shizuru stopped and looked at her again with those bewildering eyes. "Do you like growing old? Do you enjoy mundanity? Death? The passing of time and your slow, inevitable decay?"

Natsuki paused. "Yeh. Slow inevitable decay works for me."

She thought the ghost of a smile flitted in and out of Shizuru's face. "Well, that is our last resort. Although… now I think about it, Natsuki is quite the asset in herself. An established doctor in one of our biggest investments. And since dear Kenta is… well, the poor fellow got on the wrong side of a very vindictive succubus. He daren't continue his job of gatekeeper. Though now he has sent a human down to do the work for him… I shall be having a word with his mother."

"Right. How old are you?"

"Eternally young." She answered . "It is quite tiring."

"Right."

"Now, Natsuki must look her best. Try not to look too… gormless." Shizuru muttered something and the wall dissolved into a cacophony of fluttering bats that flew away in alarm. They stepped through the strange door into another fucking world.

Everything was upside down, for a start, and then with a sickening lurch, they were standing right side up. Except that Natsuki knew she was still upside down, compared to the real world, but all gravity told here was that this was the right way and the real world was backwards and everything was just…

"Fucked up."

Shizuru frowned. "Language, Natsuki."

"Terribly sorry. I just walked in on upside-down world. Nothing strange about that." She surveyed the world. The domed ceiling was rock, but laced all across with strange, slightly luminous lichens, giving the underworld the appearance of twilight on the surface. The buildings were mostly square, with small, glowing windows, and they clung not only to the 'floor' but also extended up into the walls of the great cavern. In the centre, a massive cathedral thrust up from the ground, green with thousands of years of mould and climbing vines eating away at its crumbling pink stone. It was breathtaking, strewn with buzzing purple specs that must have been some strange insect, and Natsuki's eyes had trouble drinking it all in. "Holy shit."

"This is Asheol. It is our home in this area. The council meet here, and the less… hominid of us live here. We are otherworlders. Welcome to the lion's den, Dr. Kruger."

Natsuki gave Shizuru a worried glance before she adjusted her leather jacket and cleared her throat, gathering her courage before she continued. "Right. President Viola, show me to your leader."

Shizuru's eyebrows rose. "I am your leader."

"Your other council of leaders, then?"

"Yes, of course. Well then, brave human, let us hope that you are not eaten by anything on the way to the Basilicum."

"The what?"

"Natsuki, fewer questions, more…" Shizuru thought for a moment. "More aplomb."

Natsuki made a face at her. "Lead on then, Prez."

They wound through the streets, and Natsuki looked perplexed at the many indiscretions. The streetlights had no bulbs, and greeny-purple balls of fire burned by themselves inside them instead. The cobbles were mostly stones, but the occasional squirrel skull stuck out as strange. Creatures most definitely not human-esque peeked out from their heavily curtained windows, and at one point a distinctly lobster-shaped being the size of a pro-wrestler saw them and scuttled off. A group of satyr women smoking pipes on a wall watched them with mild interest, and a tiny man hovering in the street on gossamer wings took his hat off with respect to Shizuru. It was a visual orgy to Natsuki, who was used to seeing the inside of a hospital all day, and the inside of Nao all night.

"Shit. This place is… am I high?"

"I would hope not. And at any rate, the otherworld controls most of the city's drug trade."

"What?"

"We have to make money somehow. We do not care if humans want to whittle away their time using drugs."

"Wait, so I spent most of the summer of 2005 buying weed from you?"

"You can look at it that way if you'd like." Shizuru smiled. "Now, you must uphold the utmost respect for the council, understood?"

"Yes, mum."

"And you must only speak when spoken to."

"Aye-aye, captain."

"And you must be aware that my vice-president is a dragon."

"Sure- wait and minute, what?"

"Reito-ryuu is a black dragon, the obsidian prince. He is to be addressed by his dynastic title, Lord Obsidius."

Natsuki frowned. "What a poncy name."

"The dragons are largely inactive, but they always hold a representative at our courts and they hold a great deal of sway. There was a time, before the Recession, when dragons ruled our world."

"Cool. Be nice to poncy dragon, be nice in general, and don't buy drugs, gotcha."

"Wonderful." The siren replied sarcastically as they approached the huge bronze double doors of the Basilicum. She took from the pocket of her coat a large rusted key and uncharacteristically jammed it into the keyhole with a great gesture, trying to turn it. It didn't budge. "I must demand a new key at some point."

"Here, let me." Natsuki said without thinking and reached to turn the key, much to the horror on Shizuru's face. As soon as her fingers touched the metal, a shock coursed through her body, great forks of screaming, thrashing fae-fire that burned her insides and threw her to the ground, a twitching mass of crackling energy.

"Ara, that's never happened before." Shizuru said mildly. "But on the bright side, Natsuki may be dead now anyway."

The doctor coughed up some blood and groaned from her place on the floor, rolling over with the imprint of a squirrel skull on her cheek. "Fuck."

"Natsuki should know not to touch strange objects." The siren observed distantly, fiddling with the key until it finally clicked. She sighed and looked down at the faintly spasming human, offering her a flawless, porcelain hand with the glimmer of disdain. Every fibre of her being screaming out for her to _stay the fuck down_, Natsuki eyes the hand suspiciously.

"Am I going to get zapped if I touch _you_?"

"Am I an artefact of significant magical importance?"

"Probably." Natsuki replied taking the hand and allowing herself to be pulled up by a surprisingly strong grip. "Whoa!"

Shizuru apologised under her breath as the doors began to creak open of their own accord, roiling blue smoke pouring out in insidious tendrils. "Follow me, Natsuki, and for the love of all that you humans consider holy, _be quiet_."

She nodded and followed Shizuru through the doors into the gloomy Basilicum, her human eyes barely able to make out the grotesque décor. Gargoyles of all creeds and varying degrees of ugliness leered down at her from the eaves, shadows splayed across the high-roofed antechamber and hiding in the nooks of crannies of eerie statues that watched them wordlessly. The light came from cast iron brackets on the walls, green like everything else in this crazy place.

They emerged from the antechamber into a vast space, the dust of centuries settled in the corners. At the far end, seated around a vaguely semi-circular table, were eleven… what had Shizuru called them? Otherworlders. The head of the table was empty- presumably the siren's space- and to the right of that was a dangerously attractive man. His hair and eyes were dark, as was his outfit, though small plumes of steam occasionally escaped from his nostrils. Behind him, a long, lizard-esque tail swished treacherously back and forth as he regarded her. He looked at her, then looked at Shizuru and smiled.

"What have we here, Shizuru?" his voice resonated through the Basilicum, although it was barely more than a whisper.

The siren strode confidently towards her council, Natsuki struggling to keep up with her inhumanly large strides. "Ara, surely the dragons have seen her already, Reito?"

"We don't want to appear pretentious." He interlaced his fingers as he watched Natsuki creepily. "That said, I am hungry and you've bought a lovely entrée."

"I have a proposal for the council." She motioned for Natsuki to stay in the centre of the semi-circle while she took her place amongst her kind. "This is Dr. Kruger. She was sent by one of us to the hospital morgue, where she got there before I was informed that the position was vacated."

"By whom?" A petite, mousy woman asked.

"An ankou." Shizuru replied, looking over at a greying man, "He is yours, Thanatos."

"He will be punished." The god of death replied mildly. "Why bring her here, Shizuru?"

"She is immune to siren song; I cannot make her forget."

"Kill her, then." He dismissed.

Shizuru glared at him. "We need a gatekeeper, and Kenta- your ankou- cannot take the position any more. She is a doctor. The position is congruent to her lifestyle."

"Her lifestyle is human, Shizuru." Reito said. "Any consumers looking for a post-feeding snack will eat her."

Someone cleared his or her throat. A large, Amazonian woman further down the table with swirling tattoos covering her arms held up her hand. "Surely we have others at the hospitals?"

"Armitage." Thanatos addressed her. "It is difficult to get anyone of us to work at a human hospital. Consumers cannot- the presence of blood and chi is too high for them to cope. Pixies and other woodkin hate suffering. Only my people will do it, and I have all the ones I can spare working at the moment."

"I am sure that we could find _someone_." She growled.

"Someone who will go through six years of human medical training?" Reito pitched in, stroking his chin. "That leaves us with a six year deficit. Dr. Kruger may be suited to fit the gap while we find someone."

"Bloody humans." Armitage muttered, shifting in her seat. "Just be rid of them all, I say."

"What will consumers feed on?" A man on the other side of the table with a row of serrated teeth that indicated that he must be some sort of… 'consumer' asked tiredly, as though the proposal had been made many times before. "No, now is not the time to discuss this. The human."

"Well, we shall take it to vote, as the council should." Shizuru said. "All for allowing Dr. Kruger to act as gatekeeper for the time being, raise your hands."

Thanatos, Reito, Shizuru, the mousy woman, and three others. That was seven. "All against?"

Armitage and the rest of them opposed. "This motion has been passed. Dr. Kruger will act as gatekeeper."

The otherworlders muttered amongst themselves at the verdict. "Surely it is… dangerous, you must admit?" Reito reiterated his earlier point as a couple of councilmen got up and left. "Shizuru? Have you considered this?"

"Admittedly not as much as necessary." She confessed. "But she is not dumb, Reito. She understands her position."

"Do you?" He turned to address Natsuki directly. She was shocked for a few seconds, having been feeling increasingly anxious as the monster-people had decided whether or not she would die. She whetted her lips and looked him in the eye, which was more difficult that she'd thought.

"Y-yes… Lord, um, Obsidius."

He chuckled a bit. "Shizuru, you continue to entertain me so."

"I shall take that as a compliment." The siren raised her elegant eyebrows. "Now, the sooner she is out of Asheol, the less likely it is that an ogre will eat her."

"How… merciful of you. Well, I look forward to meeting you again… Dr. Kruger." He stood up and stretched his impressive arms, his dark eyes flashing amber suddenly. With a great tearing sound and the feeling that the whole world was yawning at once, his body contorted and lazily coiled around until he grew and morphed into a massive ebony dragon, black-purple wings extending nearly the whole span of the Basilicum. He launched himself upwards, and Natsuki watched in amazement as the 'roof' wavered and disappeared as he went through it into the cavern of Asheol and melded into the darkness.

"Dragons." Somebody muttered disapprovingly.

"Always with the big entries and exits."

"Did I tell you about the time my great-aunt Sophie- you know, the banshee? Well, she went out with this blue dragon, like a summer fling, and he…"

The conversing pair walked out of earshot as Natsuki stood, rooted to the spot. Now she, Shizuru, Thanatos and Armitage were the only ones left in the room. Armitage stood, glared at everyone and excused herself, but Thanatos stayed seated, silently brooding. Beside him, a scythe glinted in the firelight, and Natsuki was suddenly quite aware that the company she was in… well, Death himself was sitting in front of her. A black dragon had been talking to her. Oh very dear.

"That went well." Shizuru commented, talking half to Natsuki and half to Thanatos. Natsuki blinked at him- he'd suddenly stopped being and old man and had gotten much younger- he looked now around fourteen, very greek, with dark curly hair and twinkling eyes. A pair of greyish wings pressed tightly to his back, and he regarded her, making her heart jump. He was a god. She was in a room with a god. He smiled and turned to Shizuru. "I would say so. You and your… humans."

"Thanatos-kun would be out of work if they did not exist, hmm?"

"Don't call me that." He pouted, suddenly very far removed from the man who had blithely suggested that they kill Natsuki a few minutes ago. "And anyway, don't you have more important things to do than run around the overworld picking up humans?"

Shizuru considered. "Probably."

"Well, I suggest you do your job instead of filling in for subordinates." He started clipping his fingernails. "Speaking of subordinates, I should be off to deal with Kenta. He knows better than to be bragging to pretty humans. More trouble that they're worth, ankou…"

He yawned and the ground below swallowed him up in black energy. Natsuki blinked a couple of times and turned to Shizuru. "Right. Can I wake up now?"

"I'm not sure you appreciate the seriousness of your position. Natsuki is the first human allowed this kind of freedom by the council for… for an immeasurably long time." The siren stood up. "You owe me a very great debt."

Natsuki groaned. She was in enough bloody debt already. "Like money? 'Cause, Shizuru, I'm skint already…"

"No." she stepped down from the dais and walked closer to Natsuki. "It is a different debt. The repercussions of this incident will burden me for many years."

"Then why help me in the first place?" Natsuki demanded, eyes narrowing, stance slipping into something more aggressive. "If you people really are as selfish as you put across, why not just kill me?"

"I…" Shizuru paused, as if actually lost for words, but regained her poise a moment later. "It was merely convenient."

For some reason, Natsuki felt disappointed.

"Now, Natsuki, before anything else… we have much to do."

* * *

><p>"I'm home!" Natsuki yelled for the second time that night, though feeling immensely different. The lights were on, so Nao was back, but nowhere to be found. "Fuck my life."<p>

Natsuki decanted her crap onto the sofa and just managed to grab a cold beer from the fridge before collapsing down to watch late night television. Her human brain was definitely struggling to cope with everything, from vampires to upside down worlds to fucking dragons and gods who sat on the council in the otherworld.

Experimentally, she flexed her hands, feeling strange. Before she'd left, Shizuru had given here several things. The first, most unexpected and by far the most painful was a mark on her lower left back; this was explained to be the accepted mark of debt in the otherworld (Natsuki personally was quite worried about the dubious nature of this debt). With a flick of her hand, Shizuru had caused the mark to appear, the second time Natsuki had seen her do something definitely non-human. The first had been her strange, ethereal song in the mortuary. Natsuki didn't want to be on the receiving end of that extraordinary power again.

The second was what Natsuki remembered was an 'artefact of significant magical importance', and for a second she was worried that it could send her into another fit. Fortunately, it didn't. It was a ring, permanently cold and sitting on her finger like a strange, foreign presence. Shizuru had explained that it was one of many used by the otherworld army before the Recession (thousands of years ago, when the otherworlders had stopped their perpetual war with humans and retreated underground to live in secrecy), a weapon of great value.

"It is, within bounds, whatever weapon you wish it to be. I am told that the magic works with any sentient mind." Shizuru had said casually, handing her the little piece of jewellery. Natsuki hadn't believed that it was actually the real deal until she decided that she'd like a sword, and then- da-naa- a finely-wrought shortsword was in her hand, just like magic. Not _like_ magic… actually magic. She was using magic. That was pretty cool in itself, and after trying a couple of times (increasing the complexity of the weapon took a bit of effort, she learned), she sat quite smug with a gun in her hand that she was pretty confident could take out even the hungriest of vampires.

The third thing was a book. The fourth was a warning.

"You are under my protection, Natsuki, and my kin will know that. However… you are still human. It will be a long time in our company before you can shuck the chains of your old race. You are bottom of this food chain, and you must act accordingly." She had looked down upon the vulnerable human then with a strange mixture of emotions on her face. "I will not… go out of my way to help you, understood?"

"Great." Back in the present, Natsuki remembered the enigmatic siren's words and fretted about everything and anything. A banal talk show began, but she looked straight through the television, fingers nervously fiddling with the unfamiliar ring, reflecting on the whole new world she'd just found out about. Her thoughts wandered from the impossible city of Asheol to the impossible Shizuru herself. The siren was alluring, and beautiful, but so cold, so calculating: easy to lust after, impossible to love. She'd said she didn't care for Natsuki, that there was nothing but practicality guiding her decisions. Thanatos had told her not to run around doing the work of her underlings. So why had she been at the mortuary tonight? Why had she not, as she promised, killed Natsuki? Nothing made sense any more. She'd spent six years at medical school finding out everything there was to know about humans and their varying ailments, and now she'd found out that there were a whole underworld of un-humans that could kill anyone at any time- but mostly chose not to.

"Oh, doctor, I'm feeling awfully hot." Nao's sultry voice broke her reverie. She pressed off the telly and relaxed back into the sofa, pleased that after a harrowing experience in the otherworld she was at least going to get some sex.

"Well, let me take your temperature miss." She let Nao come around the sofa and sit on her lap, wearing a rather lovely set of lingerie, and felt Nao's forehead. "Well, you do feel awfully hot, Miss Zhang. You should probably…" her voice dropped huskily, "Take some of your stifling clothes off."

"What a good idea." Nao began to strip slowly, peeling her clothes off one by one. "Doctor, my pulse feels strange."

Natsuki reached into the pocket of her lab coat and took out her stethoscope, taking plenty of time feeling her way up to Nao's chest before pretending to listen. Indeed, her heart was hammering, but Natsuki wanted to go along with the roleplay, forgetting for a blissful moment that she had a sword in her ring. "Miss Zhang, it seems that there's something very, very wrong with you… I'll have to do a full body examination."

She let her fingertips dance around Nao's chest, tugging her bra off, undoing the clip at the back deftly while her hands roamed across Nao's stomach. "Oh, Doctor…" Nao said lustily. "Doctor…"

"Hmmm, no clues here, Miss Zhang, I'll have to check your lower body." She caught the elastic of Nao's pants in her fingers and slowly pulled them down. "Ah, I see the problem right here."

"What is it, doctor?"

"You need some erotic stimulation, and quickly too. God knows what will happen If you don't." Natsuki succeeded in taking Nao's pants off, and began removing her own clothes. "I can prescribe just the right course of treatment."

Nao moaned as Natsuki's hands found her pressure points, kneading, caressing, touching, probing, getting everywhere and anywhere. They rocked in rhythm on the sofa, Nao's hands tangled in Natsuki's long, dark hair, all roleplay forgotten, writhing, turning, sometimes meeting in the brush of a kiss, other times further within each other than was medically safe. Ragged breathing, moans, grunts, sighs, shouts, the complaining of the sofa's springs, it all started to mesh together into the tempo of sex.

They ended up on the soft, carpeted floor some time later, breathing deeply. Natsuki had somehow managed to lose every item of clothing except her socks. They looked at each other; it had been good, it was satisfying, but now it was time for bed.

Natsuki sank into the double she shared with Nao when they were on good terms and sighed deeply. Perhaps she'd wake up and it would all be a dream. Perhaps she'd taken some strange shit at home and hallucinated the whole things.

Perhaps she shouldn't be wondering what Shizuru looked like without her clothes on.


	3. Plenty of Men in the Sea

Well I'm not much sure what happens in this chapter; all I know is that I have to keep writing or I will lose the thread of this story. Pretty much focusing here on introducing some shit, bit of foreshadowing, and I wanted to define Shizuru's character a bit more. I wanted to keep her psychotic in a reserved way, like she is in the anime. Anyway, thanks for all your reviews and especially to emoxsongxwriter for generally being awesome? And please, keep sending in mythological creatures you'd like to see!

* * *

><p>Chapter Three: Plenty of men in the sea<p>

"Tell Dr. Nielsen that he can stick his enema up his-"

The nurse hung up. Natsuki sighed and picked up her coffee, only to find upon gulping it down that it had already gone cold. Her hair was messed up and she ached all over, having gone overboard again last night with Nao. Apparently, having a heavy workload made Nao's libido increase like it was tied to inflation rates. A night of shagging may have been dreadfully enjoyable, but Natsuki was feeling the aftermath now, hobbling everywhere. And then there was the elephant in the room: literally, an elephant. Well, an elephant-man shapeshifter who had come in with a massive gouge half-severing his head, was written off as dead (he'd been, luckily, in human form at the time), and then had regenerated in the morgue and scared the shit out of the pathology department. Natsuki had learned a new skill: damage control. And damage control's name was Shizuru Viola, siren, and professional memory-eraser. There was some seething, settling smugness that Natsuki clung onto- Shizuru's song didn't work on her. She snapped out of it too quickly. Whenever the lofty, permanently busy otherworlder appeared to deal with the various incidents that happened at Fuuka Hospital, she'd always keep a wary eye on Natsuki, presumably aware of the power that she'd given the human.

Natsuki's mastery of her even more crammed schedule was precarious at best- she'd once been dealing with a giant, evil cockroach that had scuttled out of the morgue's secret passage, going all Rambo on its insectoid ass, when a troll had burst in and asked where 'cuddles' was. Cuddles turned out to be his pet giant cockroach. Wonderful. Natsuki apologized for shooting it profusely before starting a conversation with the horrendously ugly green-skinned creature, one that bizarrely had led to her prescribing him some Viagra. The pharmacists would think that she was taking the biscuit when she casually sidled up and asked if she could have a course of meds for a fucking troll and his droopy willy.

Well, at least life wasn't boring. How many humans could attest to seeing a troll penis?

"Dr. Kruger." Someone said that irritatingly alien name again. It may have been Saeko's wish that Natsuki study medicine, but she knew in her heart that she was not the original Dr. Kruger… she was merely the, ah, memory. The crap sequel. It was a disconcerting thought, so Natsuki, pig-headed to the extreme, pushed it out of mind and turned to whoever it was addressing her.

"Dr. Nielsen!" She exclaimed unhappily, thinly veiled by unconvincing enthusiasm. "I was just coming up."

"Don't bother." The older man replied flippantly, thrusting a thick file into her hands. "I have a patient for you to see. I'm on my coffee break now, so you need to take over for a bit."

"Right." She took a hold of the file and flinched at his steely gaze, before nodding mutely as he strode off, counting change for the espresso machine out as he went. "Brilliant." She took a look inside the file. "Miss Akane Soir. Wait a minute, didn't we go to high school together?"

"Dr. Kruger, you're talking to yourself." A doctor said mildly, and Natsuki, fuming, turned to face him before registering the blonde, weedy appearance of some random F2. But then she read his badge. Kenta Deux, Intensive Care Junior Doctor. Oh brill. This was Kenta from the ICU. "Strange, when everyone else is talking about you."

Natsuki gave him a glare before clearing her throat. "I've got to go and see to this patient."

"Obstetrics? I was just headed there myself." He fell into step beside her, his smile sneaky. "Don't give me that look. I'm an Ankou; just trying to drum up business, you know?"

"Business? You could have sent humans down there to die, idiot!"

"Exactly." His eyes sparkled. "Business for… us."

Natsuki snorted. "Get your dead the normal way. You work by commission, right? I read the big book. You're just greedy."

"Ankou's gotta live." He shrugged. "Or un-live, I suppose, if you want to get technical. But I don't want to talk about me! I'm just a guy. You're… well, Dr. Kruger, you're quite the talk of the otherworld right now."

"I am?" Natsuki asked, quite surprised. She hadn't really thought that Shizuru's actions had been that public. Kenta grinned, and she saw for a harrowing moment that under his human illusion, his face was a skull with two fires burning for eyes. Why oh why had she got herself into this?

"Oh, yes. Viola-kaichou gave you an armsman's brand. They haven't been used since the Recession. It's caused quite the stir."

"An armsman's brand?"

"Your ring." He explained. "Back before these modern times, when humans knew the otherworld existed, a fair few of them took our side. We used them as spies, and as footsoldiers in the War. They were called armsmen, and they had one of those rings to defend themselves, but also to mark their allegiance."

Natsuki looked at the dull bronze-ish jewellery dubious. That wasn't what Shizuru had told her. Exactly. She was beginning to distrust the enigmatic siren and her gifts. "Right. But we're not going to have another war, yah?"

"Yah." He mocked her back. "Well, unless the Vampires get their way."

Natsuki decided she didn't even want to know. She'd had her fair share of vampires waking up after glutting themselves on human blood the night before, so fat they could sleep in the fridges for a couple of days before they woke up and started worrying Dr. Helene, and then Dr. Helene started worrying Natsuki. "Right, look, I got myself a massively crazy job because of your relationship issues, and I could have done without knowing that any of your crazy people ever existed." She poked him accusingly in the chest. "So, be thankful, or I show you what I can do with my fucking armsman's brand."

"Ooh, the human is threatening me." His blonde eyebrows rose. "I'm cowering. Look, my hands are quivering."

He showed her his hands, probably knowing that since her association with otherworlders, she was becoming able to see through their often half-assed attempts to hide their… un-human-ness. With Kenta, it was just cloak of flesh that felt real enough, if not a little cold, when you touched and/or looked at it (though why would you really want to do either?), but she was beginning to be able to see through it too often. He was a skeleton. A fucking skeleton. She saw the bones and the remains of tendons under the pale skin. He was obviously trying to be psychologically nasty to her, but Natsuki refused to be creeped out. If she was going to live this crazy life, she was going to adapt and embrace it, to learn how to be best. Because that's really what she cared about. Well, not dying would be good, too, but ultimately, it was like god had set her a more massive challenge than anything she'd ever been set before, and if there was one thing that Natsuki Kruger could not ignore, it was a challenge.

"You should get that looked at. Tremors could be a symptom of… say, highly chronic cowardice? An inflated ego, too- may cause bloating of sense of self-importance. I'd recommend a course of humble pie."

He leered at her. "Fine. Be snarky, Dr. Kruger, but don't come running to me when you get out of your depth."

"Can I make a 'friends and enemas' joke?" She asked brusquely, opening Akane's file and trying to ignore the obvious weight that his threat carried. She received no answer, and assumed that Kenta had left. Thank god.

"Okay, hi, Miss Soir…" she drew back the curtain of Akane's bed to an alarming sight. Her high school friend, once so vibrant and healthy, looked grey and sick with worry. "Ah."

Her pregnant belly bulged from under the blanket that covered her. "N… Natsuki?"

"Hi, Akane. Long time." Natsuki checked her stats. Her blood pressure was very low, and her iron was below what it should be. Women could get anaemic in pregnancy, but not usually to this level. "Has anyone treated you yet?"

"Uh… Dr… Dr. Deux came in a few hours ago. He was nice, but I feel much worse now."

Ah yes, a scion of the god of death came in a while back to suck some life out of you. That would explain the illness. Or anaemia. But hey, nowadays, Natsuki thought, the god of death thing was more likely. "Okay. Well, I'm going to give you some ferrous sulphate with your meals and keep you here to monitor the baby. It will get your iron levels up, and… put some life back into you."

"Oh, thank you. Kazu-kun was so worried."

Ugh. Akane was still dating that sop Kazuya? Wait, Kazuya had enough testosterone in his body to produce sperm? Good on the guy. She'd never have thought so. "…Right. Listen, is there anything else I can help you with?"

A ghost of a smile graced Akane's face. "How have you been? You and Chie going off to med school together like that, I thought you two… you know?"

A blush came unheeded to Natsuki's cheeks. Sure, at med school she and Chie had… well, they'd experimented, once Natsuki had shrugged off her natural indifference to touching and had gotten sufficiently drunk. It wasn't until she'd met Nao that she'd entered a serious relationship. "Ah, no, Chie and I are just good friends."

"Did you meet anyone then? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?"

"Is it any of your business?" Natsuki growled, her face heating up as, unheeded, images of last night came into her mind.

Akane giggled. "You were always easy to read. Well, I wish you all the best."

"You too… it says here you're due soon." Natsuki reminded herself never to ever get pregnant. "Do you want me to put some vitamins with your iron supplement?"

"If you think it's best, doctor." The pregnant woman smiled, tucking her lanky hair behind one ear, looking very tired and much older than Natsuki knew she was.

Her pager, conveniently, went off. "Sorry about this. Have a good day." Natsuki looked at the number and groaned. Dr. Nielsen was back from his coffee break. Collecting herself, she walked out of the room confidently, more for herself than Akane, but nevertheless poised and alert.

Alarm bells went off in her mind as soon as she turned the corner. She didn't trust Kenta not to hurt Akane just because he had a problem with Natsuki herself. Before she had time to turn around, a cry rose from a cluster that was visiting Mrs. De Haille. Turning 180 degrees on the soles of her feet, Natsuki called instinctively on her ring before realising that she was in the middle of the hospital, ending up with, following her stream of consciousness, a marvellously forged scalpel with Nordic patterning running down it. Looking at it in despair, Natsuki shook her head and ran back towards the commotion.

Akane's ECG was going crazy.

"Fuck." Natsuki muttered. "She's in v-fib! Can I get a crash cart in here?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Natsuki saw Kenta's smirking face and growled as the BLS team rushed in.

It was all going terribly wrong.

* * *

><p>Shizuru was angry. And, in Natsuki's three weeks of experience with the siren, she had come to the conclusion that any emotions that broke the cast-iron strength of the president's composure was strong enough to rip the world as we know it to tatters. It had been a busy week. Really busy. For them both.<p>

"Thank you Natsuki." Shizuru said, her voice quivering slightly with rage. "I assure you that Thanatos will be reprimanded for his lenience. They are trying to test my waters, to see when I will break… but we shall not allow than, ne? Any challenges to your rights will… well, it is a matter of principal and saving face for me."

"R-right." Natsuki played with her ring, wishing she had worn a cardigan today. The morgue, where the two women often met, was too cold for these sorts of long discussions. "If you have time, I've got something else you may want to see."

"I'm afraid-"

Natsuki roughly yanked at one of the fridges and pulled the white sheet off, revealing the cold body of a short, sprightly woman. "I checked her tattoos. She's an elf."

Shizuru regarded the body with mild interest. "And?"

"Murdered elf."

"Yes?"

"Shizuru! This isn't just a consumer dozing in the fridges for a while before slipping back into the night! It's a dead person." Natsuki indicated the flawless, unbroken skin of the pale elf. "And not, like, a slashed-up elf either. A carefully killed elf."

Shizuru shrugged and began fastening up her coat. Natsuki had noticed that she kept abreast of human fashions, instead of dressing in ceremonial shit like the other Asheol-dwelling otherworlders. It made her wonder just how often the siren ventured into the human world, and for what reasons. "The elves police themselves. Clan disputes are common."

"So you don't care about this?" Natsuki growled, gesturing to the body. Shizuru turned to leave and cast a condescending look over her shoulder, her dark, smouldering eyes half-amused.

"No." She said simply, before striding up the stairs and disappearing in the blink of an eye. Natsuki's temper flared and she slumped against the wall, gazing at the elf. Shizuru may not care, but Natsuki had trained as a doctor. She had a strong sense of right and wrong, and leaving this elf to rot was not at all right. But how to go about it? It wasn't like she had any contacts in the otherworld (bar Shizuru, but Shizuru wasn't exactly someone she felt comfortable asking for help), and even if she didn't she was a doctor, not a private investigator. It wasn't even any of her business. She was just the gatekeeper, of course: one of many employed to allow hungry consumers in and out of the human world, covering their tracks. A dead elf was not in her job description.

Ah, damn it. She took a photo of the elf's tattoos on her phone so that she could tell which clan she was in and put her back in the fridge. Dr. Helene, whose memory of any strange incidences had newly been erased by Shizuru, came clip-clopping down the stairs looking flustered. "Natsuki."

"Everything's normal down here, Youko." She flinched at the first name, but had come to accept that the familiar form of address helped her create trust between them. "Contamination of the tissues."

"Ah, that explains it. Well, thanks again, Natsuki. You're a massive help to me."

"No problem." Natsuki gave her the best smile she was capable of (which, giving her some credit, was excellent compared to the perpetual scowl of her high school years), and took off her latex gloves, dumping them in the bin. Making up her mind, the young doctor nervously opened the secret passageway and began the trek through the tunnels to Asheol, having finally memorised the way. It was even creepier without the confusing but protective presence of Shizuru beside her, but Natsuki wasn't about to let that stop her or admit that she felt insecure.

She kept to the shadows, her gun in hand just in case. An ogre looked at her once from where he was delivering newspapers but left her alone. Natsuki thought he looked a bit like her great-aunt for a moment.

"You're on my turf now, human." A writhing plume of black smoke dropped from the sky and knocked into her, sending Natsuki sprawling along the cobbles. Kenta, his human illusion gone, loomed down on her, swathed in black cloth. "The president is trying to take me down. You know what she can charge me for? Only third-degree exposure."

"I love you too." She struggled to her feet. "Kenta, you can't just kill a pregnant woman!"

He snorted, looking down on her. "I don't think you realise just how we work, Kruger. We do whatever the hell we want, as long as we don't get caught. Humans are fodder. We let them live because we need them, not because we're nice." A wicked gleam came into his… eye. "Is it the president? She's so perfect and human, isn't she? Wrong. Fucking wrong, Kruger. Viola is the worst of us. The very worst. That's why she's our leader."

Natsuki didn't believe that. She growled in the back of her throat and clutched her gun harder. "Get the hell out of my way, Kenta."

"I don't think I will." He took a step towards her, causing a seeping chill to ooze into Natsuki's bones. "A gun? I am a scion of death himself. Don't embarrass yourself."

"Get out of my way." She said again, looking more confident than she felt.

"Make me."

Natsuki gritted her teeth. What a childish guy. He really didn't like her. Really really. "Listen, skelly-boy." A plume of assurance blossomed in her chest as she stood toe to toe with him. "I get that you think you're king of this castle. I'm not doing anything wrong. If you underestimate humans, we'll come back to bite you on the ass. And while I might not be able to kill you- you already being dead and all- I can bloody well rip your bones out: one by fucking one."

She thought that sounded suitably badass. Looking up into Kenta's fiery eyes, she steeled herself, stomach muscles contracting, and stance dominant. This was not her natural habitat, but Natsuki didn't have the time to worry about that. If she could bluff her way past Kenta- if she could convince him that she was more dangerous than he thought- she stood a chance of not getting her ass kicked/dying.

His eyes narrowed and his mouth twitched. "All right, Kruger. I'll let you live your cushy life for a little longer. But when the kaichou's remembered how tasty humans are…" he snapped his fingers and a spiral of black smoke erupted around him. "I'm looking forward to watching you die."

He evaporated out of existence.

* * *

><p>It was a cold evening. Shizuru was above ground, winding her way around the streets, observing the humans do their Christmas shopping. She thought it quite frivolous, to buy presents- the greatest present Shizuru offered people was their lives, and in comparison, a Susan Boyle CD seemed pretty shabby. Nevertheless, she smiled at the wide-eyed children who pressed their noses against the glass of toyshops, fantasizing about receiving this or that. They were innocent.<p>

Shizuru liked innocent.

Surrounded by humans, she felt predatory. It was only natural, after all; as a siren, she needed the life force of foolish human men to stay alive. Many thousand years ago, when she had frolicked around the Greek islands, it had been sailors that her fatal song had lured onto the rocks. Those had been good times, she remembered, closing her eyes and allowing the memory of her gluttony to wash over her. Fresh, lovestruck souls had flocked to her, siren, beauty, and murderer. Now, though, times had changed. Humans kept better track of themselves. She could not just feast and feast until she could barely remember who she was; the dead she lured would be noticed. That was why, after the recession, most of the otherworld had gone on a strict diet, and those who refused had been eliminated. It wasn't fun, it wasn't fulfilling, but it was survival. Shizuru knew that one day, the hiding would end and she would be free to wreak her havoc again, but until that tantalizing time, she must be patient and present herself with the décor of a much less hungry siren.

She spotted her target. Thirty-seven year old male, falling off the radar, marriage in tatters, job on the line. These were the kinds of men she preferred- she liked to sooth them with her song, to believe that she was doing them some good. Face impassive, she followed him through the crowds, waiting patiently as he picked up a take-away from a fast food restaurant and had a smoke before heading to his house. Falling into step behind him, she licked her lips slightly, unaware of just how hungry she was. Best not do this again. It was all the effort she was putting in to keep Natsuki out of trouble. She'd been stupid, rashly siding with the human doctor just to put Reito off-kilter. Then again, there was nothing Shizuru enjoyed better than testing the black dragon's patience with her.

He turned into a nearly deserted car park. Shizuru smiled. It was too easy. She began a low humming, almost inaudible; that she knew would nevertheless carry across to his ears. Human hearing was surprisingly selective. He paused for a second, looking over his shoulder, and saw her standing there. "Hello?"

His voice was hesitant, but her song drew him in, making him turn around completely. He glanced around, seeing nobody else. "Are you okay?"

The time had come to switch to a whistle. A whistle was a wonderful thing, a cool line of calming emotion and support that men like this one needed. It snagged on his ears, filtering through his brain and pulling him closer. Shizuru moved her pitch lower as he got closer, his eyes glassy. "It's all right."

The words were soft, smooth, and she knew that for some reason he'd feel peace inside himself. Oh, how the irony hurt her. For six thousand years Shizuru had craved the same fate that all of her victims had suffered: death in eternal happiness. This man was no different. They drew together and Shizuru's mouth grew dry and needy. Unheeded, her bird-like wings unfurled from her back; her illusion had slipped off, her talons flexed and slackened in her pockets. The man thought he saw an angel- what he really saw was a siren. Or a harpy. Shizuru had been known as a harpy many times through history, but siren was a nicer label. He reached out his hand to touch her face, his fingers trembling. This was it. Shizuru shuddered in anticipation.

The moment they made contact, her song grew and swelled, larger and larger, filling the space around them, invading him mind, stripping from him his humanity. His eyes grew wide and his cheeks grew hollow, his skull becoming visible as his skin shrivelled and tightened. Shizuru never liked watching it. It seemed cruel and barbaric if you looked at the man, even when she knew he was at peace. He took his last breath and smiled, slumping onto the floor. Shizuru felt the break from the flow of his life force and drew in a small gasp, the power flooding into her body. It was wonderful. Not quite as good as old times, but still, good.

She picked his withered corpse up and took off, shooting into the sky with two beats of her wings. It felt good to be in aloft again; Asheol was not a good place to fly, considering that it was a giant cave that did not allow for much exploring. No, it was nicer to be free over the city of Fuuka, though not carrying a dead man in her arms. She circled the docks for a while, revelling in the sea air, before flying far out into the ocean until she saw the lights of a fishing trawler in the distance. Landing soundlessly on deck, she searched around for some rope and something heavy. A couple of breezeblocks stood stacked against a wall, so she filled the lining of the man's suit with them until he weighed enough to sink and promptly tossed him overboard.

Well, she mused, looking at the horizon. The night is young, and Shizuru was still plenty hungry. There were always more men in the sea.

* * *

><p>In the steaming tar-pits of Gehn, sister city of Asheol, Reito wallowed with Thanatos, the former in his dragon form, small jets of fire erupting from his nostrils. The death god beside him had rolled up his trousers and was dipping his feet in the boiling tar and smoking a marvellously tooled crimson pipe. On his lap, a copy of the human paper was open at the sports section.<p>

"Reito?" he asked, tapping some ash into the pits.

"Yes?" the dragon answered with a grumble, quite content to snooze in the lovely warm tar.

"What are we going to do about the Eidolon?"

Reito froze, turning his head to peer down at his companion, who was currently in his old man guise. "I… The dragons have no interest in these matters."

Thanatos snorted. "Don't lie to me, old friend. I know what you lizards do, sit all day in your volcanoes plotting."

"If you must know, we are… assessing the situation. My father thinks it prudent to wait and see what damage it does. The texts warn that we should not judge the Eidolon on its past, rather its present."

"Its present is dangerous enough!" Thanatos exclaimed, looking incredulously at the dragon. "If Shizuru were to find out that we have located it, she would… well, I have known her a long time. She is a sinner amongst sinners, and knowing that we have the eidolon at our disposal would prompt her to…"

"I understand." The dragon prince said, examining his long, white talons. "Well, I have some sway with my court. I will ask them to plan something, whatever it may be."

"I know your court; you will spent years deliberating it. The Eidolon will fade."

Reito slumped back down into the tar pits and looked like he was slumbering, so Thanatos sighed and stood up, closing his newspaper and putting out his pipe. He was about to leave when one giant, yellow eye cracked open and the dragon muttered: "The Eidolon, Thanatos… I cannot quite believe it had finally come into being."

The death god's brow furrowed and he turned away, his face worried. "Neither can I, Reito. Neither can any of us."

Everyone was going to die.


	4. The Sandwich

Edit: Site is back up letting me log in, sorry for the delay!

Thanks for all your reviews! I am monumentally relieved that people like this story. This chapter hops around a wee bit, but a lot happens. I've included that bestiary that Kajskk suggested, in case you're in the dark as to the nature of any of the wonderful creatures of the otherworld.

On a side note, I'm always open for more! Have a favourite non-human you'd like to see? Review or PM me!

* * *

><p>Chapter Four: Sandwich<p>

In a smoky bar called Rorsrarch, one of a hundred equally seedy establishments on the bad side of the river, a goblin sat drinking a pint of bitter. His long braid of brown hair draped over his shoulder, swaying back and forth in the dim light, and he looked around the bar through his pince-nez, which clipped onto his hooked nose. Yamada was quite a stunner as goblins went, and as a result was in an advantageous position: he could exits in the human world without any illusion, which meant he was very useful to everyone. Tonight, he was meeting with a human who wanted information. His beady eyes snapped to the door of the bar as it opened, revealing a young human woman in biking leathers. He licked his lips, taking in her curvaceous figure as she searched for him. Yes, he thought, looking at the photo of her he had found in her yearbook at Fuuka University. She was definitely prettier in person.

As agreed, he took off his green fishing hat for her to indicate that he was her informant. Natsuki saw him and walked nervously towards him. So this was the President's ward. He'd certainly been expecting some sort of miracle-woman, or at least someone a bit more willing to put out (girls of that ilk were a well-known preference of Viola. If one was looking to garner some favour with her, it was common to offer her a beautiful young human girl for her enjoyment), but this was not Shizuru's type. She was too independent, carrying herself nervously but with a certain air of assertiveness. Yamada's greedy goblin eyes were drawn, as all of his kind's were, to money, and Natsuki had money. She had a thick wodge of bills in a non-descript envelope under her jacket. Smart girl, he thought, to hide it, but not smart enough.

"Evening." He greeted her as she sat down opposite him in the booth. "What would you like to drink?"

Natsuki's eyes narrowed. "Mineral water."

Yamada pouted, but nevertheless gestured to the barman. "So, to get to the point, Dr. Kruger…"

"I was told you were a reliable informant." She accepted the glass of water from the waiter but did not drink it, interlacing her fingers and propping herself up on her elbows. "Is that correct?"

Yamada grinned, showing off his yellowy goblin teeth. "Of course, Doctor. You'll find no other service as comprehensive and… trustworthy as mine."

Natsuki, admittedly, had popped a couple of valium pills before venturing out that night, simply because she was so nervous. Her hands had been shaking madly, and for a woman who wanted to look in control of the situation, nerves and stuttering were not the vogue. Steeling herself, she pulled a thin folder of papers from her pocket. "This elf. I need to know who she was, what she was involved with- why she would be murdered."

Yamada took the papers and the pictures that accompanied them with a surprised look. "Dr. Kruger, the elven clans fight between their clans all the time."

"Yes. Which means that anyone who wanted to kill an elf could easily cover it up in clan warfare. This elf ended up in my hospital, which means that her clan didn't tidy her up. I would think that this would indicate that they didn't know she'd been killed." Natsuki's brain was certain of this. She's re-read everything Shizuru's book contained about elves every night this week, annoying Nao so much that the redhead had thrown her out into the guest bedroom if she so wanted to 'read a book a fairy-tales'. Natsuki had wanted to protest, but she found a satyr curse scribbled in one of the margins that caused bad luck and had gone out of her way to find out how to do it. She hadn't managed yet, but her explorations had revealed to Natsuki that unlike most humans, she had the ability to at least do minor magic, such as seeing through otherworld illusions. If the past weeks were anything to go by, it got stronger the more she associated with creatures like Shizuru or this goblin man. A dark part of her mind wondered how strong she could become. Wouldn't it be wonderful, to be like them? She recalled the conversation she'd had with Shizuru in the tunnels, how she'd vehemently stated that she preferred being human. Now, after seeing her new world, she couldn't help wondering if it would be more advantageous to be… one of them.

Yamada's grunt cleared her mind. It must be the Valium, Natsuki thought, flipping her hair behind her ear absentmindedly. "You're quite the little detective, hmm, Doctor?"

"As a doctor, I'm a detective in a manner of speaking. Diagnosis is similar to investigating a murder." She replied, uncertain why exactly she wanted to know what happened to the elf. Perhaps it was just human concern, but she'd seen a fair few cold-blooded consumers pass through the morgue recently, and she'd come to the conclusion that if she didn't do anything, nobody would.

Natsuki Kruger couldn't resist a challenge.

"I see. Well, I'll gladly stick out some feelers for your elf, Dr. Kruger." Yamada smiled. "Is there an… address to which I should send my findings?"

Natsuki returned his smile, not fooled. No way in hell was she giving her address to Mr. Creepy. "That won't be necessary. I'll meet you here, this time next week. Is that acceptable?"

"Yes, yes. A week is more than enough time." Yamada licked his lips. "Now, I don't work for free, Dr. Kruger. The matter of payment remains unresolved."

Natsuki raised her eyebrows at the grubby man. "I will decide how valuable your information is and pay you accordingly when we next meet."

Hard to get, Yamada thought, chuckling slightly. She'd done her homework, then, taking money with her, knowing that he'd see it and tell more than he should, expecting instant, easy payment. He'd underestimated the human, he thought with slight amusement. The goblin had been playing the field for twenty years now, and it took a great deal to dupe him, but Natsuki Kruger had managed it. He silently congratulated her on it before offering her a crooked grin and a hand. "That seems sensible. Pleasure doing business with you."

She took his hand and gave him a confident, assertive shake, but he knew her ruse was falling apart. He'd be more careful next time. "Have a good evening, Mr. Yamada."

She stood up in one smooth movement, giving him a nod before sauntering out. Yamada watched her until she disappeared out of the door and then glanced at the glass of water she hadn't drunk, humming to himself. This was going to be big business, this whole chaotic situation, and he was going to finally pay his debts off.

A man walked through the door that Natsuki had exited out of a few minutes earlier. He saw Yamada and smiled, his dangerous amber eyes pinning the goblin to his seat. His black outfit failed to hide his impressive bulk, something that his kind always suffered with when creating their illusions. He sat down, looking at the glass of water with a grimace. "Good evening, Yamada."

Yamada tipped his hat to the smouldering man.

"Good evening, my Lord."

* * *

><p>"Natsuki best watch her bishop." That annoying superior voice said again. Natsuki, with her eyes closed, liked to imagine that it was her anti-conscience. It was too hot to be playing chess. Why on earth had Shizuru brought her here? The tar-pits of Gehn were no place for board games. An ogre was snoozing, like, ten feet away.<p>

"Natsuki's bishop is just fine." The doctor replied angrily, not wanting to accept that yes, her bishop was in a vulnerable position. "I still don't understand why we have to play chess. And if we _have _to play chess, why here?" She looked, alarmed, as a Cyclops and a minotaur conversing about the football results strode by in their towels.

"I suppose you feel the heat." Shizuru mused, moving her rook to take one of Natsuki's pawns. "I do apologise. But Gehn is much more private than anywhere in Asheol. Here, we are indistinguishable in the steam."

Indistinguishable was fine and all, but Natsuki's toes were hot and sticky with tar already, and Shizuru was dangerously close to suggesting they go for a swim. She puzzled over the board before moving her knight. "How's my bishop now, prez?"

Shizuru chuckled. "Natsuki's bishop is indeed in a more advantageous position. Her king, however…" Shizuru moved her queen, taking one of the pawns guarding Natsuki's king. "Check."

"Fuck off!" the doctor growled, wondering how she could have been so stupid. "In fairness, Shizuru, you've had eternity to perfect your chess skills."

"I suppose." The siren considered, yawning and stretching herself languidly. "How has business been?"

The question didn't flow with the conversation, and it jerked Natsuki out of fretting about her king. "Busy. Why on earth do you guys drink yourselves to death every time you feed?"

"It is more fun."

Brilliant, Natsuki thought; the lovely, fun-loving consumers were just slaughtering innocent humans because it was more entertaining. Because when I go out for Chinese, I absolutely have to gorge myself until I'm comatose, since that's _fun_. These consumers obviously just need a mean chicken chow mein. Natsuki decided to order some to the morgue, just to see if they'd actually eat it.

"Is Natsuki… disgusted?" Shizuru asked, though her eyes were bereft of worry. Any answer would not perturb her. It was merely to facilitate conversation. Natsuki wanted to get an emotion chow mein and force-feed it to the siren.

"I suppose, but there's nothing I can do to change that." She said mildly, covering her king with the knight from earlier. "Shizuru… are you a consumer?"

The siren's mind flashed to her most recent meal and her stomach began to grumble. "Yes. Did you not read the book I gave you?"

"I did, but it wasn't exactly clear about sirens. You guys are smattered throughout history, more legend than truth. I don't believe half of it. You don't have wings, like the book says."

With a coy smile, Shizuru dropped her human illusion and bared her massive wings, spanning over ten metres at least. They were a slightly darker brown than her hair, flecked with white and streaked with lavender. Natsuki's jaw dropped. Holy freaking… well, just, fuck it all. Right. She reconnected her jaw with great difficulty, gulping down her surprise. Shizuru reached out a taloned hand and took her knight. "Check again, Natsuki."

Suddenly, as though smelling Shizuru's true form, a massive, monstrous head rose from the neared tar pit. A great, sea-blue kraken, nostrils flaring, widened its eyes and snaked its head over to them. "Shizuru!"

"Ara, Ishigami-kun is enjoying the tar-pits?"

The kraken grinned. "I thought I smelled you! How are you, my darling?"

"Fine, thank you." She petted his head as though he wasn't a massive leering ugly fucking _kraken_. "How are the wife and kids?"

"Oh, the usual. I'm meant to be hunting whales for her at the moment, for our youngest- but an old kraken like me needs his comforts, hmm?"

"Of course." Shizuru agreed, sparing Natsuki a glance as the doctor took her rook and got herself out of check with a triumphant grin. "This is Natsuki, my human."

_My _human? Natsuki eyebrows rose at the possessive form of address. Perhaps the kraken was not so cuddly as to pass up a tasty human snack. "Nice to meet you." She greeted him.

"And you too! I've heard an awful lot about you, even out in the ocean." Who hasn't? Natsuki thought tiredly. It was like being a celebrity. Well, except instead of paparazzi, she was hounded by yetis. Papayetis. Yeh.

"That's… nice?" he smiled, if a kraken could smile, and turned back to Shizuru.

"Well, I must be going. I was about to leave when you got your wings out, nice to see you anyhow."

"Send my love to Yukariko." She wished him goodbye as he launched himself back down into the tar. "The tar-pits have a doorway similar to the one under your hospital at their darkest deeps." Shizuru explained when Natsuki wondered where the kraken was heading.

"Shizuru, do you know everyone?" she asked.

The siren shook her head and chuckled. "As much as I would like to think so, Natsuki places me far above my true position. While it is true that I hold a position on great power, I delegate a great deal to my underlings. I prefer to watch and wait."

"Wait for what?"

Red eyes looked at her curiously, trying to read her intentions. Shizuru licked her lips slowly, actually having to deliberate an answer to that question. "Many things," she eventually said, her eyes far in the future. "Things that you, Natsuki, lovely as you are, are not privy to."

"Why not?" she demanded, reckoning that the future of the entire world was pretty vital to her as well.

"Because, my dear Natsuki, it is not a future you would be at all happy with." Shizuru said simply, avoiding the doctor's heated stare.

"You're protecting me from the harsh truth? I'm a big girl, Shizuru." Natsuki pointed out, just stopping herself from pointing at her breasts to illustrate the point (not that it wouldn't have been hilarious, but there was no was she was going to draw attention to her breasts in front of a hungry siren, whether or not that siren was meant to be helping her).

"Natsuki may be a big girl, but that does not stop her being eaten by the nearest basilisk."

"Nothing has tried to eat me so far!" Well, Kenta had harassed her a bit, but she left that out.

"Then I shall leave you here." Shizuru stood up abruptly, a glimmer of amusement in her eyes, gesturing to the topless group of werewolf men eyeing them both up from a nearby tar-pool. Natsuki glanced at them and paled.

"On second thought, I love chess. Let's play another game."

"Good girl." Shizuru cooed in such a tone that Natsuki half expected the siren to offer her a Scooby snack for being well behaved. "But I am bored of chess now. Perhaps we should… play trivial pursuit?"

Natsuki thought this was a very unfair suggestion.

* * *

><p>Just as things were starting to seem overwhelmingly shitty, life, as it often does, suddenly remembered that it was meant to, in general, be in equilibrium, and Natsuki felt as though things were looking up. She hadn't been asked to fetch Dr. Nielsen his coffee at all in the last week, which was a truly awesome feat in itself. She'd found a hundred pounds in a battered copy of <em>The Day of the Triffids<em> under her bed, so she could actually make her half of the rent, and on top of all of this, she'd finally had the chance to kill a vampire. That was something she'd been anticipating for a looooong time.

It was Thursday evening, which in the otherworld Natsuki has worked out was ladies night in the giant buffet that was mankind. Generally, she got home from work around six, napped until eleven, and then snuck out to drive back to the hospital to do her gatekeeper duties. Tonight, she'd already ushered a couple of giggling succubae through to Asheol, and was just getting in some take-away since she hadn't eaten supper when a howl rose from one of the cabinets. Natsuki flipped open the file for it. Sixteen-year-old male, suicide. Fuuka had a deceptively high suicide rate due to their comparatively large population of consumers. Being a large city, it wasn't too strange to have half a dozen suicides a night per hospital. Then again, not all consumers drank themselves to death.

She sighed and yanked open his fridge, taken aback as he lunged out at her, pinning her to the ground. This guy really looked about fourteen. His hair was long and blonde, his eyes wide and frightened, dried blood caked all over his face, black dirt coating his hands and feet, covering his fingers. He roared, showing a mouth full of dangerously sharp teeth.

"Get off!" She growled back, trying to shrug him off. He sniffed her and narrowed his eyes. Being young, his sense of smell would be far more accurate that doddery old Fr. Greer's. She must have confused him. Human or not human? Slightly siren, with a worrying whiff of kraken.

Natsuki reached for her armsman's brand, shaping the metal in an instant to a baseball bat and whacking the young boy in the back of the head with it, dazing his enough to let her slither out from under his body. "Come on son. I'm just the gatekeeper."

He blinked and looked around, dazed and confused, regaining some kind of decorum. "W-where am I?"

She sighed. Newbie? Most certainly. "Fuuka General Hospital's morgue."

"Why?"

"Presumably because you drank yourself into oblivion last night." She cautiously stepped backwards, reforming her baseball bat into a gun. Cursing, she forgot the cocking handle and had to waste ten seconds remembering where it went and incorporating it.

"I did? Wait, why… oh, blast." He was a posh guy, from his accent, which stank of aristocracy. Many vampire families existed in the normal world as distant, very private members of the upper classes, holed up in their mansions and estates. "Ah, so you are a snack that papa has prepared for me on my awakening?"

"Most certainly not." She scowled at him. "I'm the gatekeeper here."

"You're human." He sneered, looking down on her (difficult, since he was only just edging into puberty and stood about five four at most). "We do not employ humans."

"You do now." Natsuki began to get angry with the smarmy little brat. She reminded herself never to have kids. "Anyway, put on some clothes and get back to Asheol where papa and mama probably have a servant waiting to pick you up."

She knew better, really, than to rile a pubescent vampire, but hey, it was fun. He unexpectedly lunged at her, super-quick with post-feeding strength to boot. She managed to duck and dodge out of the way just in time, and he crashed into the opposite wall with a crunch. This didn't faze him. Natsuki lifted her gun as he turned around for another go and he paused, looking at the weapon warily. "You'd dare point a gun at me?"

"Uh, yah."

"Do you know who I am?"

"No." Natsuki grinned. "But you have a tiny penis."

Mortified, the teenaged vampire looked down at himself and remembered he was naked. "Y-you… I'll have you sacked!"

"And I'm the queen of England." Natsuki yawned. "Listen, kid, get your arse through this door-" she prized open the secret passageway, "- and out of my sight before I shoot the fangs out of your mouth."

They could have just left it there. It could have all been fine, if he'd just done what she said and buggered off. "I shan't listen to a thing you say, you repugnant little human."

"Um," Natsuki looked meaningfully at the gun in her hand. "Lad, imma firing my repugnant little gun at you in a minute."

He sniffed and sighed. "So be it." Natsuki, relieved, moved just to the side of the passageway so he could go through, thinking that she only had a lesser demon to wake up around two and then she could go back to sleep.

Alas, it was not meant to be.

He was nearly through the door when he lunged at her again, his clawed hands outstretched, thumping into her and gouging a nice big scratch into her shoulder. Acting on instinct, Natsuki squeezed the trigger and shot him in the stomach.

The vampire roared and gasped, moving his hands down to where black blood was rapidly seeping out of the wound (onto Natsuki's nice clean slacks! Oh, the retribution…), awkwardly tumbling off her.

"What… the… f-fuck?"

"I did say I'd shoot you." Natsuki tried all nonchalant, but it was Shizuru's territory. She couldn't actually kill him (he was dead already, duh), but she could 'kill' him in a manner of speaking, sending him into a deep restorative sleep while his body healed itself. Give him two or three days and he'd be undead and lovin' it again. "Oh, fuck. You're heavy."

She plonked his bloody corpse back onto the rolled-out fridge and slammed it shut, drawing a little star on his file to indicate that she'd have to go back to him later.

Fun times.

Anyway, Natsuki thought, returning from the memory with a bit of smugness on her face, that was bound to backfire on her soon. But while it didn't she was on top.

"Yo, Natsuki." Chie sidled up beside her as she ferried some files down to urology. "Wanna know a secret?"

"Depends, will it inconvenience me in any way?"

"Nope."

"Fire away, maestro." The junior doctor said.

"I did a little digging on your girlfriend."

"Nao?" Natsuki asked, sceptical. Nao was pretty elusive and mysterious in general, though she knew that the redhead hadn't had the ideal upbringing and was allowed some secrets.

"No, your other girlfriend."

It wasn't sarcasm. Chie grinned, showing Natsuki a snap of her and Shizuru walking and chatting in some indiscriminate street in Fuuka. Although they met sometimes in the otherworld, Shizuru tended to appear at random times when Natsuki was out shopping or picking up take-away for a chat. God knows why. "Chie, why the fuck have you been following me?"

"Calm down, eesh." The womanizer held her hands up in surrender. Natsuki was not worried about getting caught with Shizuru, but worried that Chie would come up against some hungry, nasty otherworlders if she hung around near Shizuru, who seemed to attract trouble, generally in the form of shady folk looking to curry favour with her. "Just saying, she is hot as."

"She's not my girlfriend, Chie." Natsuki explained. "We, uh, met at a… dog show."

Chie paused. "A dog show?"

"Yeh. She was entering her… poodle."

"Really?"

"Or course. Why would I lie to you?"

"To hide your burgeoning affair!" Chie gleefully suggested, snapping a picture of a passing orderly on her phone. "She has a nice ass."

"The orderly?"

"And your girlfriend."

"Shut up, Chie, or I'll…" Natsuki couldn't come up with a threat that didn't involve pain. "I'll nick your phone and erase its memory!"

"I'm sure you will."

"Doctor Kruger!" Ugh. Natsuki turned to face Kenta without stopping walking, a curious Chie shutting up.

"Dr. Deux. How wonderful to see you."

"Same!" he gave her a dazzling smile. "I just wondered if you'd like to have a chat with me, briefly?"

Oh, every corpuscle of my being yearns for a chat with you, Kenta, Natsuki thought sourly, but saw a glimmer of something different than the usual malice in his eyes. He didn't deserve her attention (he damn well deserved a punch in the nose, but hey), and so she gave him her best death glare before politely excusing herself from Chie's company, passing her papers for urology onto the fellow doctor, who promised to deliver them in her stead. She and Kenta veered off onto a corridor that Natsuki vaguely remembered as leading to the ICU.

Kenta was strangely silent and tense, leading her through the wards to a private room. A thin, fragile-looking woman with light hair laid in a bed, gashes covering the parts of her skin that blossoming bruises didn't. Natsuki's eyes widened. With the heavy bruising and damage, she almost didn't catch the characteristic clan tattoos of an elf.

"Yes." He saw her look and nodded, closing the door behind them. "I was told that you do a bit of investigating along with your gatekeeper duties."

"How did you know that?" She narrowed her eyes.

"Friend of mine was in one of the fridges when you had her out to show President Viola."

"They can hear me?"

"Oh yeh. Every word. Apparently you run around wildly with your armsman's brand and make funny noises when you're not working?"

"Fuck." She swore, a blush rising in her cheeks at the thought of him knowing what a prat she was. "Anyway. Yes, I've been looking into the elves, and why people would want to murder them; not clan wars, but malicious kills."

"This one came in by ambulance this morning. Found west of the river."

She peeled the layers of blankets back and looked at the tattoos. "This is… ah, fuck, I wish I had my book, but I think Wirtree Clan?"

"Yes."

"Same as the last one." Natsuki's worry grew. "Do you know what assaulted her?"

"Injuries would indicate claw marks, clumsy." He pointed to the deep lacerations running diagonally across her face. "Her blood work was inconclusive… if there were high levels of lycochrome protein, I would say werewolf attack, and if there were crazy pheromones going on, I'd say incubus or succubus, but both are normal."

Natsuki absorbed this information with interest. Kenta obviously knew a great deal more than she did, having acted as gatekeeper last year. He was a conniving bastard, but yes, he was useful.

God, she thought, I feel as manipulative as Shizuru.

"So, we have no way of knowing what did the assaults on both elves, but safe to say it wasn't human." She mulled it over. "I'll do some digging on the Wirtree Clan, see what beef the otherworld community may have with them. Thanks for showing me this."

He smiled. "No problem. Here's a copy of her file." He pressed it into her hands. Natsuki's brow creased. He was being too nice. Sincerity, or just bad acting? God knows. If it helped her get to the bottom of the elf murders, she didn't care if it was a message rolled up and put inside manticore poo. Well, actually she did. But that scenario hadn't happened. Yet.

She left, Kenta's eyes on her back the whole time. Creepy, creepy little dead man. Could she ask Shizuru to take out her killing urges on him? Pssh, it was a good idea, but he had _rights_.

Time to make another appointment with that hideous goblin Yamada, she supposed. And a sandwich. She wanted a sandwich.

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><p>Bestiary:<p>

A wonderful reviewer suggested I add this at the end of my chapters to explain some of the mythical creatures I mention. This chapter will be the first one, containing all the ones mentioned so far, with one at the end of other chapters reminding you of/ introducing new ones.

**Ankou**: _The Ankou is the henchman of Death(__oberour ar maro__) and he is also known as the grave yard watcher, they said that he protects the graveyard and the souls around it for some unknown reason and he collects the lost souls on his land._

**Siren**: each of a number of women or winged creatures whose singing lured unwary sailors onto rocks.

**Dragon**: _Large, fearsome dragons that slumber in the centre of mountains. There are different breeds, ie Reito is a black dragon, and is dragon representative to the council._

**Elf**: _In this fic, humanoid, highly tribal people with the ability to do small magics. Little pointy ears naturally, but if they live in the human world, the points are cut off in early childhood to resemble a human ear. Cruel :(_

**Ogre**_: __a man-eating giant._

**Minotaur**: _a creature who was half man and half bull, the offspring of Pasiphaë and a bull with which she fell in love. Confined in Crete in a labyrinth made by Daedalus and fed on human flesh, it was eventually slain by Theseus._

**Cyclops**: _a member of a race of savage one-eyed giants. In the Odyssey, Odysseus escaped death by blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus._

Kraken_: an enormous mythical sea monster said to appear off the coast of Norway._

**Succubus**: _a female demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping men. In this fic, they feed of sexual energy of humans. Horns on head, leathery wings, whip-like tail. Male counterpart is incubus._

Yeti: _a large hairy creature resembling a human or bear, said to live in the highest part of the Himalayas_.

**Basilisk**: (have you not read Harry Potter?) _a mythical reptile with a lethal gaze or breath, hatched by a serpent from a cock's egg._

**Werewolf**: _In this fic, men/women who a born/turned into werewolves, can change at will, but have to change at a full moon._

**Demon**: _Lots of different types of demon exist. A succubus is a demon. When I say just 'demon', it means I'm too lazy to research an actual type of demon. Assume they are slimely, vaguely humanoid and nasty. Lesser is smaller and less powerful, Greater the opposite._

**Manticore**: _a mythical beast typically depicted as having the body of a lion, the face of a man, and the sting of a scorpion. Yum._

**Satyr**: _one of a class of lustful, drunken woodland gods. In Greek art they were represented as a man with a horse's ears and tail, but in Roman representations as a man with a goat's ears, tail, legs, and horns. Here, they are the goaty type :)_

Sorry for the massive bestiary, but they'll be shorter next time. If I've forgotten something, feel free to review/pm me with a question!

Lots of love,

Emmy


	5. The Whisper

Hey guys! Sorry about the delay. I've got to mention that I'm going away on Duke of Edinburgh on Sunday, and then to Weymouth straight afterwards, so there may not be another chapter until late next week. Just to warn you. Thanks for all the reviews, anyway :D

I'm going to put the bestiary/notes at the beginning this time, since I saw ethnewinter do it in Inter Nos and it works really well. Happy reading!

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><p><span>Bestiary:<span>

**Imp**: _Small, lesser demons. In this fic, they are very small and furry with surprisingly long, creepy fingers and little leathery wings to fly around on._

**Selkie**: _Selkies are seals able to become human by taking off their seal skins, and can return to seal form by putting it back on._

**Charon**: _Charon, in mythology, was the ferryman who ferried the souls of the dead across the river Styx (or Archeron, depending on which myth), at the cost of one coin._

**The Underworld**: _In the Greek Mythos, made up of the middle bit, then three different places you could end up: Tartarus, for the evil, Asphodel Meadows for the normal and Elysium Fields for the good. It's a little different here for my own purposes, but you get the gist of it._

**Underworld Rivers**: _t__he rivers Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, and Cocytus all converge at the center of the underworld. There are a couple of other important ones too. For instance, it was said that those dead people going to the Asphodel Meadows (those who lives equal lives, not too evil and not very good) would have to drink from the river Lethe to lose their identities._

**The judging panel**: _Aeacus judges Western soul, __Rhadamanthus judges eastern souls, and Minos (famous king who sent people to the minotaur) was the deciding vote and the judge of Greek souls, but I've tweaked it slightly._

**Hades**: _God of the underworld, eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, brother of Zeus (Sky) and Poseidon (Sea)._

**Helm of Darkness**: _Hades's helmet, can make the wearer invisible._

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><p>Site Note: <span>Swindon<span> is a town in South-West England. It's where I live, and we're twinned with Disneyland (lol) which is ironic because it's a shithole. We do have the Magic Roundabout, though, which is seven roundabouts arranged around each other to make it hellish for a learner driver like ME. For you Americans, I don't think you have many roundabouts, but this is THE roundabout to end all roundabouts. I mention it in context.

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><p>Chapter Five: The Whisper<p>

Natsuki awoke groggily at six-thirty to the bleating call of her alarm, world in disarray, a little voice telling her that it was most definitely Sunday, and she had the day off today. Next to her, Nao groaned and swatted her with a limp limb of some description before tunnelling under the covers to get rid of the noise. Fumbling with the off button, Natsuki's eyes widened. An imp was sitting on her bedside table.

"What the fuck?" She hissed at it, making 'shoo' motions with her hands at the tiny little demon. It cocked its shaggy pink head at her before gleefully jumping at her face, claws outstretched. "Mmffgg!"

"Natsuki, I swear to god I'm going to stick that clock…" Nao grumbled, peeking from under the covers of her side of the bed. "Huh… the fuck?"

The imp's illusion, in haste, had transformed it into a garden gnome, which was sitting on Natsuki's face with a frighteningly merry facial expression. She laughed nervously, extricating the imp from herself and shoving it down the side of the bed. "Uh, nothing! Just, you know…" no excuse came to her. "I just have a garden gnome, is all!"

"It's creepy." The PA accused, her wiping sleep dust from her eyes and looking around at the open window and curtain. "I swear that was shut last night."

"Probably rusty hinges." The junior doctor replied. Natsuki looked down at the irritated imp threateningly, only now noticing the small scroll tied to its chest. What was wrong with a text? Or an email. A phone call, a fax, a letter, anything would do, why an imp? Natsuki made the mental note to begin training carrier pigeons just to spite Shizuru and her kin.

"I'm going to take a bath." She decided, thinking to take the imp's message while locked safely in the toilet. But no, fate had other plans. Nao rolled over and snaked her hands around Natsuki's waist.

"Mmm. Seeing as you've woken me up so early, you can compensate me with a luxury spa treatment, can't you, pup?"

Admittedly the idea did make crazy swoodles erupt somewhere in Natsuki's lower body, but she pushed her libido down for the sake of her duty. "Can't we do that another time?"

She gave a sudden cry as Nao moved lightning fast to straddle her prone form, looking dishevelled and slightly humorous in her oversized green shirt. Her dominant stance said: you will do exactly as I say, Natsuki, or there will be hell to pay. The doctor sighed and relaxed, thinking that if the message really did need reading, the imp could wait while she and Nao fooled around in the bath.

"Will there be bubbles?" she asked innocently, indicating with one hand for the imp to wait. With an indignant huff, the pinkish, hairy demon hopped back on top of her alarm clock and settled into a curled-up position, presumably for a nap. Good demon, thought Natsuki, sitting up and taking Nao's outstretched hand as they pushed and pulled into the bathroom. It had been Nao's specification that they get a large bath; the PA was very conscious of her grooming habits. Natsuki didn't mind; Nao earned the lion's share of the money that came into the apartment, anyway, having such a high-profile job with lots of apparently lucrative sidelines.

"Come here you." Nao ordered, haphazardly whirling the taps of the large bath anticlockwise as to open them. Jets of water came spurting out, splashing Natsuki's pyjamas. "Aww, all wet now. Better take them off."

_Dear Dr. Natsuki Kruger,_

_ Inkeeping with your recently afforded status of gatekeeper (of the jurisdiction south of the bisecting ley lines of the city of Fuuka, east of the river), it is my pleasure to inform you that your name has been added to the official Asheol role of service._

_ As an employee of the Greater Council of Asheol, you are invited and encouraged to attend the Seven Thousand, Four hundred and Eighty Second annual Asheol Civil Service Ball and Feast. This will take place on Thursday the Eighth of December at the Grand Hall of the Basilicum. The dress code is Black Tie and the party begins at eight sharp._

_ This year we have been lucky to secure a marvellous ABBA tribute band._

_Looking forward to seeing you there, RSVP by imp where possible._

_ Asheol Senior Council Representative,_

_ Yukino Chrysant, Chief Commissioner, Council Seat of the Woodlands_

Natsuki read it a couple of times before wearily sinking into the sofa. A ball. They were not her kind of things, balls. She'd gone to her graduation ball back in Fuuka Uni and had to endure a whole twenty minutes of dancing with that prat Takeda, who'd gone on to become a Physiotherapist, so she recalled. Anyway, it was horrible. Would she have to rummage in her cupboard for her old dress? A particularly lovely black number, as she remembered, which had caused her to be the object of desire of pretty much everyone there. Natsuki was aware that she was good looking, perhaps more than other people, but she took it as a blessing and a curse. If only she were as ugly as Yamada, nobody would take a second glance; nobody would remember her. She could just… get on with things.

Truthfully, Natsuki was quite glad that she'd run into all of this otherworld shit. After medical school, she'd lost direction a little bit. The letter that her mother had left her just before she'd jumped off that cliff had kept her going for a long, long time, but just as the paper yellowed and creased, she herself had felt like her life was drying up. The letter had been simple: no sorry, no explanation of her suicide, just instructions. Codes for doors that Natsuki didn't know existed. Money. Bank details. Who to invest with, where to take a loan out, a list of the best bars in Fuuka. Reams and reams of information, with no emotion whatsoever. The letter may be Saeko Kruger's last offering to the world, but it did her very little justice, so much so that Natsuki couldn't look at it any longer. She knew it by heart. She'd followed the instructions to the letter, got the degree, drank at those bars, invested with that company. For some reason she'd expected some sort of… closure. But there hadn't been any, and she was a fool to have believed that checking off things on her mother's mystery list would have brought it.

It was a Sunday. Natsuki frowned, looking out her window at the sunny city. Hmmm. What to do? Nao was off shopping, Chie out on a date, Shizuru assassinating a cartel of otherworld drug-smuggling selkies.

_That shit is insane, though, _she thought privately. Ordinary drugs were controlled mostly by the otherworld (your ugly-ass drug dealer? Yah, he's really an ogre), but they needed something a little stronger to get them going, a trade which by law was not allowed to extend to humans, since the drugs were too strong. Natsuki had been given the pleasure by Shizuru of sampling some when she'd vehemently argued that she didn't believe the siren, and had been in a blind ecstasy for a good three hours before coming down, only to find that she'd bitten one of her own fingers off. She looked down at it now recognising the very faint stitches. Although they were stuck several thousand years ago in terms of technology, the otherworlders had a penchant for magic. It wasn't as strong as it had been before the Recession, when humans had burned their books on spells and enchantments, but a nifty little demon had healed her nearly back to new for a handful of dinars. Shizuru had actually paid in ancient currency. How cool was that?

Natsuki considered trying to pay with the francs she'd still got from a childhood trip to France, but when she'd offered the coinage to a scantily dressed succubus on the streets of Asheol, she'd got more than she bargained for. A lot more.

_How was I to know she was a hooker? And it wasn't like I… oh, what am I thinking? She rocked my world. I think I have a scar where she-_

Her doorbell rang abruptly and Natsuki jumped, glad she'd been pulled out of that train of thought. Going over to the machine, she glanced at the CCTV screen and saw none other than Kenta frikkin Deux outside her apartment block.

"Dzzzrt!" He buzzed her again. Natsuki sighed and pushed her button, opening the front doors. Kenta had named her detective inspector Kruger and decided to be her Watson. Maybe he felt bad about nearly killing Akane? Lol. No, not that, Natsuki though: perhaps he found her interesting? Unlikely. She couldn't really discern his motives, but he was helpful. The minute he started any funny business, the armsman's brand was up his arse fast that you can say Ankou.

She opened the door to let him in. He'd dressed smartly, a brown overcoat and slacks; a hat perched on his dark hair. Perhaps Kenta, had he not been a skeleton with fire for eyes and all, could have been quite attractive. He smiled as she let him in, a plastic bag in his hand.

"Sorry for the unexpected visit, I would have called you but I only have your pager number, and I supposed you'd keep it off on weekends." He took his shoes off. "I brought microwave popcorn and a Scrubs boxset."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Kenta, you did try and kill one of my friends two weeks ago."

"Sorry about that. I was just feeling vindictive." He pulled out a sixpack of Stella Artois also, along with several thick binders of notes and files. "I thought we could make up. Become friends, you know, with you being new to the otherworld and all."

"You think I believe a word of that?" she asked, incredulous.

He sighed. "No. But Natsuki, you need me on your case. I know things you don't."

Natsuki snorted, quite insulted. "Darling, the President of Asheol's council is guarding me, and helping me. She has more influence in her nose that you have in your whole body." And a nice nose it was, too.

"I have to find out who's killing elves." He said finally, hand resting on one of the binders, eyes pleading. "I owe a great deal of debts, Natsuki."

To illustrate his point, he hung up his coat and tugged his jumper off, revealing a torso dotted with the same debt-mark that Natsuki had on her lower back. "So?"

"The killer could be anyone. In all likelihood, someone I owe a debt to, and they could be calling them in. I don't want to die."

"Why not? You're hardly valuable."

He cursed at her in French, hands trembling. "I'm from the Underworld, remember? Death spirit? It's not a place I want to be as a resident instead of a member of staff, Natsuki." He shuddered, illustrating his point, but Natsuki's mind suddenly whirred as she remembered her earlier thoughts.

"The… Underworld?" she asked slowly. "All dead people go into the Underworld, right?"

"At some point, yeh."

"Then, if I wanted to see someone… you could take me to them?" She looked blankly into his eyes, her voice drained of emotion. Kenta looked affronted, examining her gaze intently.

"It never ends well, Natsuki. You're better forgetting them. They may not have gone where you thought they'd go."

Her armsman's brand coalesced into a dagger in her hand, and she brought it up so he could see it. "Kenta, I'll make you a deal. You take me to see my mother… I let you in on my case."

His mien was hesitant as he watched the sunlight streaming in from the windows glint of the dagger. "You don't want it, Natsuki. Trust me."

"Take me!" She shouted, trembling. A chance to see her mother again. To ask about the letter. To cry. Closure. She needed it. She wanted it more than anything she'd ever wanted before in her life. She growled at Kenta again. "Take me!"

He looked at her with sadness, or perhaps disappointment before acquiescing with a nod of his head. "All right, Natsuki. I'll take you to the Underworld, but I can't promise you that you'll find your mother. And if you do… I can't promise you'll like it."

"Just do it." She hissed. Her grip tight, knuckles straining on the hilt of her dagger. Kenta nodded and grabbed her hand before reaching out, human illusion dropped, skeletal hands reaching out into nothing.

"Follow me." He said, clambering out the door, descending the stairs of the building, lower and lower until they came to the car park for residents. He didn't stop, though, prizing open the basement door and leading her down the damp steps into a dimly lit generator room. She blinked. Why were they here? Then, like a rip in reality, an archway formed on the far wall, with a set of stone steps leading down into darkness. "Don't touch anything. Don't talk to anyone. Don't eat the food. Standard Greek Myth rules apply, okay?"

"Yes. Get on with it."

They descended, and Natsuki felt a chill unlike anything she'd ever experienced seep into her bones. The archway closed behind them, sealing her in. maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all, she thought nervously, looking at the lichens growing on the walls. This wasn't Asheol. This was the fucking Underworld.

Kenta's grip on her wrist didn't cease when then finished the never-ending stairs and emerged into a low cave that opened up into a high-vaulted cavern, larger that she could see. In front of them, perhaps a half-mile, a dirty brown river flowed sluggishly, meandering through the dirt-packed floor. She could just see rocky outcroppings on the other side.

"Yo, Charon!" Kenta yelled at a balding man sitting playing angry birds on his iphone by the riverbank.

"Kenta! Haven't seen you down here in a while! How's life?" He asked jovially.

"Going fine, thanks. How's the wife and kids?"

"She's doing fine. My youngest is teething at the moment. The other four hundred… well, we haven't time for them all! Passage, is it?"

"Yes, for me and one other." He motioned to Natsuki and flipped Charon a dinar for his trouble.

"weel hello there," the ferryman said, raising his bushy grey eyebrows. "Hot date, Kenta?"

He made a face. "No. This is Natsuki, she wants to see her mother." The ferryman's eyes narrowed and his wirnkled brow deepened. He obviously didn't approve, but he kept his tongue miraculously well. Natsuki silently congratulated him as they transferred into a small motorboat that was bobbing gently on the river. Natsuki disliked boats and the sea in general; for one thing, it reminded her of her mother's death (her body had been dashed on the rocks below the cliff she had jumped off), and secondly she distinctly remembered nearly drowning herself at a beach party in high school. No, she thought, the best thing to do with water is freeze it, or add it to the liquor you're serving to your guests.

She gripped onto the side, feeling queasy. Kenta chatted amiable as the boat chugged across the river Styx, and Natsuki caught a few mentions of politics, and Shizuru's name or title once or twice, too. Mostly, she stared into the impenetrable brownish water, wondering what she'd find when they got to the other side.

A face stared back at her from under the water, rotting eye sockets leering. Natsuki reeled back into the boat with a yelp.

"Don't mind them." Charon said sagely, securing the tiller while he lit his pipe. "Thems who can't pay the fare end up in the river."

"The… fare?"

"Of course, girl. Charon's gotta work, innit?" He pointed to the bum-bag full of dinars around his waist. "Anyway, there's roadworks along the Cocytus just past the Lethe junction, so I'll be taking us via the Acheron."

"They still haven't built that bypass?" Kenta asked, taken aback.

Charon's face fell. "Council couldn't get planning permission. A couple of residents complained that they wouldn't be able to see the Pits of Damnation if the bypass was built, so they're stalling the bill something horrible."

"The dead are never happy." Kenta agreed as they changed course, steering away from a large channel that was blocked off and surrounded by ghoulish skeletons in hard hats and hi-visibility jackets digging. Natsuki even spotted a JCB trundling about. Roadworks in hell. Who'd have thought.

Before her, a city opened up, the four large rivers in hell- the Styx, the Acheron, the Cocytus and the Phlegethon meandered and branched off, acting as canals. Rows of squat, dim council houses sprung up from the loamy earth, inhabited by cadaverous-looking men, women and children. It was definitely hell.

"Who are all these people?"

"Well, this is purgatory." Kenta explained. "When normal people die, they have to wait a bit before we place them. At the moment, our backlog dates back to… Char, when're we doing at the moment?"

"Hamster-related deaths in 1958." He said dryly. "It's going to be a quick call."

"Would think so." Kenta chuckled. "So, most people who've had a relatively normal life end up here, living in the Underworld for a bit before we place them in either the fiery pits of Tartarus, or the meadows of Asphodel, or if they've been extra-good, a minibus to Elysium."

"But there are some complications." Charon piped in. "For instance, murderers, pedophiles and geography teachers have to go straight to Tartarus, which is why the bloody waiting list is so long."

Natsuki frowned. "What about… suicides?"

Kenta and Charon looked at her curiously. "Suicides are for Tartarus as well, usually. It is a crime in Hades' eyes to take your own life. He should take it for you."

Natsuki vomited violently over the side of the boat, splashing one of the corpses bobbing happily in the canals. Tartarus. The pit of eternal darkness. Now it had been mentioned, she felt its dark, dominating presence, a yawning void of happiness, far below them now, somehow sentient, a thing, waiting, listening. No. Saeko couldn't have gone there. She may have been a strange and erratic mother, but she was not… Natsuki struggled to think about it, her mind scrambled by the deadness of this place. It sapped the emotion from her, rendering her grey and washed-out. She recalled the words and paused. "…Usually, did you say?"

"Yep. Sometimes, if it's for a noble cause, the suicide, like not being taken prisoner in war, or not revealing information to an enemy, they're excused."

Her stomach sank until she felt it dragging along the bottom of the canal. "So we have to go to Tartarus to find her?"

"Well, we have to get through the judging panel first since you're not dead- that will piss them off- but hopefully I can pull a few strings, and then Cerberus,."

The doctor listened to him but did not comprehend his words. Her mother was in hell. Not just hell, but Tartarus, where the punishment fits the crime. What sort of horrendous torment would Saeko be under? Natsuki shuddered to think, and for a brief, mad, moment, considered scooping up a handful of water to drink. She remembered reading that water from the underworld rendered one emotionless, soulless, a machine incapable of worry. Or perhaps that was only one of the rivers? She couldn't remember.

_Everything's just so stressful, _she lamented, shaping her armsman's brand into a pair of nail clippers to pass the time. The Underworld was a big place. She passed things that were obviously copied from the human world, but distorted and drained by death. Schools where students sat, listless (not much different really, then), a high street with shops (because nothing says 'purgatory' like a Primark), and even a little riverside restaurant where ghostly couples sat, not eating, empty eyes looking past each other. Eesh. It was like Swindon on a Thursday afternoon.

"Right. You remember my rules?" Kenta asked as they slowed down at a sort of central docking hub in the middle of town. Natsuki nodded irritably, thoughts of drinking her identity away behind her. She spotted several interesting people and things, but the nervous ankou pulled her away, into a large, greek-esque building, a hall so large that its whiteness startled her into momentary blindness. An audience of hundreds, possibly a thousand, had gathered around standing, and on a raised dais at the front was a single drudge of a man, dressed in a skanky suit with a garish tie and tiny spectacles perched precariously on his humungous nose. He was trembling, staring intently at a panel of three judges at the end of the stage.

A spritely little ankou, roughly the same shape and build as Kenta, appeared hopping onto the stage. "So, judges, what do we think of Kazuo Lefebre? You first, Aeacus!"

A marvelous old man with a rolling white beard on the panel stroked his facial hair, deliberating, before booming out:

"This could be the worst death I've ever seen. Blood loss due to a finger gnawed off by a hamster?"

His colleague interrupted. "No! Indeed I felt it interesting that it was fate that he was taking anti-clotting agents at the time and therefore bled to death!"

The audience laughed appreciatively. The peppy announcer began a spiel of sop. "Midas! Radamanthys has cast his vote for, Aeacus against. Remember that Kazuo here has laboured his whole life honestly, raising two very hot daughters…" the audience whistled. "It really means a lot to him to get into Elysium. Midas, shall he or not?"

The third man, dark, beardy and definitely Greek (with the added air of 'imma make King Aegus send 7 innocent men and 7 innocent woman a year into Daedalus' labyrinth to face the bloodthirsty minotaur' that made him kinda… sexy?), looked broody for a while and spoke very slowly. "Mr. Lefebre… I'm going to say…"

In her head, Natsuki went 'After the break!', but this was real life, not ITV. People were hanging on Midas's word. The King smiled and took a heaving breath before saying: "I liked the irony of the story, Kazuo. I'm putting you through to Elysium."

A great cheer rose from the audience and Kazuo burst into tears, thanking the judges for their kindness, and a couple of scantily-clad women came up on stage to escort him to paradise, linking arms with the dazed man and ushering him out of sight.

Another person took his place.

"What the fuck?" Natsuki whispered to Kenta as the skirted around the crowd, heading for the front with all of the authority that his skeletal form gave him.

"Don't question it, just follow me." He took her hand (Natsuki shivered at the cold bone) and pulled her up to the front, motioning to the compére. "Yo! Kei!"

The other man swiveled around, eyes wide. "Kenta! Bro, what's up?"

"Need to get to Tartarus, mate, with her in tow." He jabbed a finger at Natsuki. Kei grinned.

"Taking your date to Tartarus?"

The ankou growled and denied it. "Look, can you get us through?"

"Well, I reckon you can get past the judges. They won't know you're still alive, so you can just get her sent to Tartarus for being evil, pretend to escort her and voilà, c'est très facile, non?"

Of course, the ankou were French, Natsuki remembered reading… Brittany, to be exact. The two brothers quickly lapsed into French, seemingly chatting whilst the woman on stage was judged.

"Oui, je sais… mais, Kenta, nous n'avons pas de la chance, toi et moi. Je deteste mon travaille ici, je voudrais etre là-haut, avec toi…" Kei complained as a woman was dragged weeping to Asphodel. "Ah, maintenant, aller…"

He pulled Natsuki up onto the stage, and then pushed her into the centre. She didn't like being exposed in front of a crowd of a thousand dead people.

"What have we here?" Midas asked, curiously, his dark eyes piercing her. "How did you die?"

_Oh shit_, Natsuki panicked. _Think about it Natsuki. You see dead people every day. How did they die? Mr… mrs… fuck, um…_

She blurted out the first thing that came to her head. "I overdosed."

They frowned, and she was confident she'd chosen a particularly bad way to die. Aeacus piped in: "How, exactly?"

"Uh… I was at this wild party, and a friend of mine and I were shooting up, but I didn't check where the shit was from, and it was way too strong. I think I died quickly." Go Natsuki, she thought, that'll show the bastard who only gave me a B at Drama and Theatre Arts GCSE.

"So your stupid act has caused your death?"

"Your pursuit of pleasure overtook your common sense?"

"The youth of today…"

"Hang on, aren't we doing hamsters at the moment?" Midas asked calmly, checking some papers arranged on the desk.

"Yes!" Natsuki clarified quickly on urging from Kenta. "I… It was a hamster that persuaded me to take drugs."

"A hamster persuaded you to take drugs? I'd like to hear this."

"Well, I had a pet hamster… and I trusted it more than anything. So when a friend asked if I wanted to try a line, I asked my hamster. If it ran to the friend, I'd take it. If it ran away, I wouldn't. I ended up a druggie."

"Well," Midas drawled, a droll smile spreading on his lips. "I suppose you cut lines with that armsman's brand you're wearing."

_I'm fucked_.

"Run!"

Natsuki and Kenta lurched into action, leaping across the stage and out of the curtains at the back, skidding into a small room with three doors. Kenta yanked at her arm and barreled through one of them, to shouts and hollers from the audience and the clang of armour and the clink of weapons from the guards behind them. Natsuki's heart pounded in her chest as she formed a gun and fired a few random shots over her shoulder at the dashing young soldiers spilling into the cavern they had emerged into.

"Fuck!" Kenta yelled as they came to a dead end, smashing into the cavern wall with his shoulder due to the momentum. "Ah!"

A small crack in the rock face hid some sort of lock. He desperately fished for keys in his cloak. "Fuck, house keys, car keys, work keys, Nando's reward card… oh, look, one more stamp for a free chicken!"

"Now is not the time!" She yanked the bunch from his bony hands and stuck the biggest, ugliest key in the bunch into the crack (it always worked in movies), turning it with a rough twist. Surprisingly, the rock wall swung open and they bolted through it just as the soldiers go to it, slamming the door behind them. Kenta muttered something and the lock melted in on itself.

"Imma be in so much trouble for that." He groaned. Actually, he didn't groan. Something else groaned. "Fuck."

"What?"

"Turn around… slowly." She looked over her shoulder. And it wasn't a groan. It was a growl. A huge three-headed dog was leering down at them. Cerberus, guardian of the underworld.

"I'm good with dogs." She said meekly as Cerberus drooled what appeared to be acid all over the rocks. "Really good."

He leaned towards her, never taking his flaming green eyes off the doggy. "You'd better be very, very good, Natsuki, because I'm one big bone."

"Right." Thinking on her feet, Natsuki pelted over to a nearby tree, dead and withering, clinging to the rocky ground, and with a great tug snapped a branch off it. She waved it out in front of Cerberus, watching his eyes lock onto it. "Here's a stick, doggy! Lookie here, Cerby, look at the pretty stick!"

He growled and drooled, but got on his haunches and waited patiently, his six giant eyes watching the stick. Natsuki nearly wet herself, but instead forced the vomit back down her esophagus and decided she ought to grow some balls. "Okay, doggie, watch the stick, lovely sticky, ooh- there goes the stick!" She lobbed the branch as hard as she could across the landscape, and nearly fell over as the ground shook, Cerberus bounding across to pick up the stick. Natsuki's heart caught in her throat as this left behind a litter of pups that had been hiding behind the giant dog. Cerberus was a bitch, she realized. Or this was Mrs. Cerberus on work experience.

"Fuck, she's got pups." She told Kenta. "We won't be able to get through, she'll be too protective."

"Look, cut her down, I don't care."

She scowled at him, discounting the possibility straight away. "We need to get her away long enough to get through the pups."

Cerberus bounded back with the stick, dropping it at Natsuki's feet covered in drool and wagging her tail. The doctor picked it up and threw it again, this time as far as she could. "GO!"

They sprinted across the field (for it was a sort of field), and were just approaching the pups when they scattered and started barking, making the massive mummy doggie turn around and go crazy, bounding back towards them with her mouthful of fangs larger than Natsuki's forearms ready to make pet food of the two of them. "RUUUNN!"

Pelting past the pups, Natsuki looked wildly around for somewhere to go, despair hitting her like a knife in the guts, thought that could be a stitch developing. Kenta tried to say something to her, but she could hardly listen, so focused on running, and promptly found that there was no ground underneath her. She yelled out and scrambled for some sort of handhold, falling deep into the Underworld, with Kenta sighing at the top of the hole and jumping in behind her, his grey cloak billowing out behind him like some sort of deathly parachute. He grabbed her hand and they were suddenly floating quite slowly down into darkness. Cerberus loomed above the hole, her pups also looking curiously down into it. As Natsuki looked, the pups broke into some playful pushing, but one of them tripped and lost his footing on the loose soil. Without remorse, his brothers and sisters pushed him down into the hole, much to Cerberus's howling and pawing, reaching one of her great claws down into the hole to try and catch her pup, but already the little dog was falling, howling, wide eyes on all three of his tiny heads.

Without thinking, Natsuki grabbed out and caught the puppy's tail, yelping along with it as the three masses became too much for Kenta's magical parachute-cloak and they plummeted the remaining five or six metres, onto the marshy floor of Tartarus.

"Fuck…" Natsuki wheezed as Kenta fell on top of her, though luckily he was mostly bones and didn't weight that much. Besides her, the puppy whined, searching for its mother and siblings. "Oh, shhh. Shhh, puppy, Natsuki's here. Don't worry." She shrugged the ankou off and took the puppy in her arms. "Hello. Don't cry. Aunty Natsuki's here."

"When you're done." Kenta said.

"Shhh, he's really shaken up." She stroked the tiny dog softly, calming it, watching as it slowly became used to her. "Kenta, what do I do with him?"

"You're not going to give it back to Cerberus."

"Then… we'll have to take him with us."

"Really?" he asked, shoulders sagging. "All I wanted to do was watch scrubs and eat popcorn. Investigate a couple of murders. We've ended up Hades-knows-where in Tartarus with a three-headed puppy looking for your mother."

"A bit of adventure never did anyone any harm." She cooed, standing up with the puppy in her arms. "Right, lead on."

Kenta grumbled a bit but stretched a bit before taking his bearings. "Right… I think that's Sisyphus's hill to the… north, is it? So we're by the Marsh of Lost Souls. Right… Okay… Hmm…" he began walking, avoiding the lines of skeletal guardsmen that were milling around, occasionally prodding a sinner with their large point weapons. Natsuki thought they might be halberds, but didn't want to be close enough to know for sure.

"Haku!" Kenta sauntered casually over to a marvelous-looking fellow with wavy golden hair, dressed in a spotless toga. "My man, 'sup?"

The man turned from where he was ticking off names on a clipboard and broke into a smile. "Kenta? Hey, buddy! Long time no see!"

Did everyone here know Kenta?

"I know! But I can't stop, need to see someone. Can you check a name for me?"

"Have I ever failed to find anyone?" He winked. Kenta poked Natsuki, motioning for her to say her mother's name.

"Saeko Kruger."

With a thunderclap-like speed, a dark, cold aura blew into them, Haku's face falling so far as to roll along the floor. Natsuki gawped, feeling sick, and had to cling onto Kenta. Guards in the vicinity moved their hands to their weapons nervously. Natsuki swallowed, wondering what the problem was. A blinding flash of darkness struck the floor and when Natsuki regained sight she saw a tall, dark man dressed in a black toga before her, his skin a sallow bluish colour, eyes hard and murky-brown. Under his arm sat the Helm of Darkness, and Natsuki's stomach leapt as she realized that this man was Hades, Lord of the Underworld.

"Well, I had hoped never to hear that name again." He sneered, his tenebrous gaze falling on Natsuki. "You… are her daughter?"

She couldn't speak. Her mouth moved but nothing came out. His presence pushed down on her as though he was physically pressing against her, cold and hollow, a void of happiness. Eventually, a weak syllable spluttered out, something like a 'yes'. His lip curled as though she was filth on the sole of his foot. "I will not have a thing of your nature in my realm. You must leave, now."

"My Lord, she just wanted to see her mother." Kenta said, though Hades did not take his eyes off Natsuki.

"She cannot!" the god of the underworld boomed, his face wrinkling in anger. "Saeko has committed a crime more heinous than all others, and is engaged in eternal torment as a result."

"My Lord, it is only suicide-"

"Silence, ignorant boy!" He growled, hand twitching. Kenta's eye fires dimmed and he stepped back, bowing his head, sharing a glance with Haku. Natsuki swallowed and snapped her eyes back to Hades. "You are not of my domain, girl, and I suggest you leave. Your mother has done you a terrible wrong, one that I can neither rectify nor relieve. It would be better for everyone if you never came to my realm again, lest you upset the balance here."

He began to turn away, but heart burning in her chest, Natsuki cried out at him: "Please! Why? I must see her!"

"No. You cannot. You must never. And your being here is an omen, and I dare not taunt the fates. No, Daughter of the Traitor, I forbid you to enter my kingdom again. You are a creature of my brothers, of consequence, unnatural. Here in the earth, you do not belong." He raised his hand and pointed at her. "Begone, and never may you enter the Underworld again."

In a plume of darkness, Natsuki was gone, pushed through time and space, hot and cold, in death and life, stretched, folded, everywhere and nowhere, until with a jolt as was thrown onto the floor of the basement of her apartment block, a soured patch of ash below her. She blinked a couple of times and was surprised to find the pup still clutched in her arms.

_What has mother done? I… I don't understand any of this. What crime had she committed? Fuck, suicide was bad, but not… Kenta said it wasn't so bad as to warrant fucking Hades being there! _Natsuki's eyes teared up as she curled on the basement floor with the whimpering puppy next to her. She'd only wanted to see her mother, only wanted to hear her voice, ask her why. But now it turned out that there had been even more about Saeko that she didn't know. Something even worse than murder, something so horrendous that the Lord of the Underword was listening out for whispers of her name. She shuddered, closing her eyes, glad of the warmth of the dog, the solidness and unquestioning companionship of him.

"Oh dear…" she muttered into the puppy's shoulder, her hair splayed out on the floor. He smelled of wet dog and brimstone. She was tired, as though she'd stayed up a whole day, though it had actually been no more than a couple of hours. The Underworld had sapped away her happiness and resolve. "Mum, you suck."

It might have been delirium, but somewhere, Natsuki heard her mother agreeing with her.


	6. To Judge and be Judged in Turn

Hi guys! Me again. Now, I have to say that I'm not feeling very good about this chapter. Everything in it happens kind of quickly, I suppose, and the actual main incident that moves the plot forward isn't really described at all. Not that I doubt you wonderful readers' powers of inference, but it would disorientate me and i fear it may disorientate you, too.

That said, imma go ahead and get it out there, else i'll just fret over it and rewrite it ten times worse which i've already done several times.

Also, just to give you a heads up, I'm thinking of writing something about Shizuru's life before this story. How she grew and changed into who she is now, her life in ancient greece (I've been reading the Illiad and the Odyssey, finally). So look out for that on my page. It may just end up as a one-shot, or some little chapters, or whatever, but I'm crazy about her, what can I say?

Enough author drabble. Feel free to be completely honest in your reviews, because I really need to know how to rewrite this chapter.

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><p>Chapter Six: To Judge and be Judged in Turn<p>

_**Fuuka Gazette **_

_**November 8th 2011**_

_**(Turn to page 44 for our new improved cryptic crossword!)**_

_**SHOCK CHURCH MASSACRE STUNS CITY**_

_Keiko de Guilles reports_

_**City officials and religious bodies alike have been left reeling today after the shocking mass death of a congregation at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Western Fuuka last night.**_

_**St. Paul's' late night Mass, which runs from midnight to One a.m., was the victim of a strange mass murder. All fourteen attending citizens and the celebrating priest, Fr. Laurence Porter, were found dead in their pews this morning by a Mrs. Sandroit, the part-time gardener. Fuuka police are still investigating the scene, but cannot disclose information at this time.**_

_**The Gazette investigated this…**_

"Etcetera, ad nausea." Reito finished reading, flinging the paper over the table to Shizuru, his ears steaming slightly with amusement. "Mistress over your urges?"

Running her hands through her hair- a favourite activity of Shizuru's when she was in her human form and did not have claws to hinder her- the siren tried her best nonplussed expression against the volatile black dragon. The slight tremor of her body betrayed her, she suspected. "You have not the slightest idea what we go through here, Reito. When you leave council, you fly back to your volcano with your stock of purpose-bred humans to eat and sleep for another hundred years. The rest of us are… not so lucky."

Reito chuckled, a plume of smoke and ash issuing from his nostrils as he did so. "Is that… bitterness, I detect? From the unfaseable council president?" Tilting his head to the side, he studied his irate companion. "Or is it withdrawal? A binge like that, must have left you three, four times over what you've been used to these last two thousand years? The high must have been quite extraordinary."

"Are you taunting me like a child?" She asked coldly, giving him an icy gaze that Natsuki would have been proud of. "Because I will not be treated like your plaything, Obsidius."

He took the threat like a gentleman, pausing to arrange his legs on the seat he was occupying in Shizuru's atrium. It was a warm night in Asheol, so the two old enemies had taken advantage of the weather to gaze at the lichen in the open air. Gathering himself again, arming himself with a thousand barbs and verbal ripostes, Shizuru supposed, he put on a charming smile for her benefit. "Of course not, Shizuru, I only suggest that your actions have been rather uncharacteristic of late."

She snorted and relaxed into her chair, taking her eyes off him and allowing her mind to wander into the domed roof of her city. It hadn't always been so; in fact, Asheol was a recent abode of hers, her lifespan considered. She'd only been here for a hundred or so years, whereas she'd spent thousands of years out in the world before the Recession. She frowned. _Do I even remember being young? _It was a frightening thought, to have lost those fragments of memory forever. She knew she'd been born, or made, or however it was that the first otherworlders had come into being, sometime around when humans began to wear clothes of animal skins. It had been confusing, to be different in those times; she recalled long stretches of seclusion on the deserted islands that were later to become her favourite hunting grounds.

_I cannot forgive myself for this. _She pondered on her situation. _Stoic old Shizuru, pinnacle of abstinence, poster-girl of the Recession. How I have failed them all._

"Of course, only a select few of us know that it was you." Reito interrupted her depressed thoughts with his low, calm voice. "It will possibly lose you your premiership, though."

She sighed. "I understand that."

"I know that, Shizuru, but… I suspect that they will keep you on instead. It is not good for the already-discontent population to have to grow into new leadership. Not now, anyway."

_Do you know something I don't, Reito? _She gazed at him for a moment with equanimity, casting away her inherent dislike of the dragon. His sly face said one thing, his words another. Either way, he wasn't likely to divulge any of his secrets. _Unless I am to tease them out? He would very much like that, the old lizard._

"I would have to agree." She lied, letting her own smile slip out. "What with the current situation escalating as it is, sooner or later the populace is bound to catch wind of it. Better someone loved and trusted in power to assure them."

"Indeed." He muttered, taking a sip of wine, admiring her game face, tail swishing slowly from side to side on the paved floor, picking up a thin layer of dust in the process. "So you are aware of the… the nature of our problem?"

Shizuru cracked and reformed her mask into a politely shocked expression. "Does Reito honestly expect me to be ignorant of such matters? He underestimates my insight, surely."

"Then why… why must you keep it so close?"

"What better reason is there than to watch it?"

The game was becoming dangerous now. Shizuru's mind raced ahead with a hundred things that he could be talking about, cross-referencing them with any popular gossip she had been privy to. _Ara, I seem to be quite befuddled after last night._ Though what a night it had been!

Reito hands flexed on his glass. "Does it not repulse you? To think… No, I cannot even begin to expound upon the ramifications of it being here. We have been talking long enough, Shizuru, I fear I must take my leave." Looking paler than usual, he stood abruptly and bowed in one jerky motion, very unlike the suave dragon Shizuru knew so well. He launched himself into the air, the familiar yawning sensation accosting the siren as he transfigured into his larger form and sailed away, out of sight. She found herself stood up and half out of her chair before realizing what she was doing and padding back into the lounge where the purple fey-fire in the fireplace set the shadows dancing between corners. Why had he gone so quickly? Had her lie worried him? Unlikely. The way that he talked of the thing, whatever it was, was not the way of a seasoned politician like Reito. The snarl in his lips as he spoke of it, and… Shizuru replayed the scene, looking for clues. Fear in his eyes gave him away. The great black dragon was frightened: but of what?

_I will make myself sick, thinking too much_. She sank into an armchair, for once mourning the solitary atmosphere of her large home. _It would be nice to bring Natsuki here at some point. _

The thought stirred an eddy of hope in the siren's chest. _And I was going to kill you, little armsman. Rather, armswoman, I suppose. Ara, your antics do amuse me. _Shizuru frowned, her own antics called into play. It wasn't often that one so reserved as she ever lost control, and it was usually the momentary slip; a word misplaced, a phone call ignored, a conversation avoided, not a congregation murdered. She saw their blood on her hands and felt a deep, aching remorse. Very occasionally, she thought about her kind and their need to feed off humans, but could not bring herself to hate it, or to condemn it, just to control the hunger. Even then, that was hard, since she knew little else but taking and taking until a man was just a lifeless husk of dull flesh to rot at the bottom of the sea. That was how she survived, though. Her worth was far greater than, say, a nameless human… surely? It must be, because anything else and she could not exist.

Fifteen humans had been in that church. She hadn't be planning it at all, like most times she slipped, meandering around town looking for homeless people when she'd heard singing a block over and been drawn to it. Hymns. She remembered their wavering, fragile voices botching through _This is my body, broken for you…_

_Take it and eat it, and you will see,_

_I am still with you, and you will know,_

_You're very close to me._

Hymns. How Shizuru used to laugh at the righteous songs, being a siren whose voice could set men to their knees at a note. However, she'd realized last night that she was ultimately powerless, because this singing was not forced. The men and women at that church sang to their God because they wanted to, because they genuinely believed that he would save them. They sang with love and devotion. Shizuru could _make_ any man love her, swim oceans for her, get down on their knees and beg for her, but not of their own will. She'd felt a great gaping hollowness spread from her stomach then, her face pressed up to the stained glass of the tiny church, an invasive nothingness that had swallowed her whole. Hunger and anger were two very indistinguishable things to Shizuru, who rarely allowed herself to stray past irritation at the worst. Harder, darker emotions lived pressed back in her mind, in her past. No, she had then lost two thousand years of reservation and walked into that church with her wings splayed proudly behind her.

They all died thinking they'd seen an angel.

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><p>The door slammed shut, waking Natsuki up from where she'd been sprawled on the sofa. Could it be evening already? She looked out at the sky. It wasn't evening- it was dawn the next day. Yawning and stretching, the junior doctor pulled her aching body off the couch and turned to look at Nao. Why on earth was she back so late?<p>

"Sorry about the time, sleepy-head." She apologized, rubbing her own eyes. "I don't suppose you've heard? I go a call from the mayor a couple hours ago. Church congregation murdered, right in the middle of Tolerance Week. Up to our necks in shit."

"Huh?" Natsuki's ears pricked up at the words murder; a sad indictment of her priorities.

"Yeh, murder. Other side of town. Like, a dozen churchgoers, way mysterious circumstances. The conspiracy theorists are having an orgy on their graves."

"Nice visual." Natsuki grumbled, ambling across to the kitchen to meet Nao halfway, and maybe make a sandwich. Because nothing makes a girl hungrier than a near-death encounter with the Underworld. "What've you been up to while I've been picking up the mayor's shit, anyway?"

_Out and about, you know: quick trip into Death, took tea with a couple of Gods, the usual. _"Uh, I bought a puppy."

"What?"

"I know the landlady said no pets, so I'm keeping him really quiet." She explained. "He's really very easy to manage."

"So the whole flat's going to smell of dog from now on?" Nao asked, smirking as a thought crossed her mind. "Not that it didn't already, pup."

"I love you too." She flipped her flatmate off before rummaging in the fridge. It was mostly preserved takeaway, and some suspicious-looking ham lurking in the corner that she was sure had been there since Easter. "You want anything?"

"Sex?"

"Other than that." Natsuki chuckled. "Okay, it's bacon sandwiches or Wednesday's prawn curry."

"How about some sex?"

"Prawn curry it is." She fished the takeout from the recesses of the fridge and chucked it in the microwave. "And some doggie chow for Duran."

"You were serious about that dog?" Nao asked incredulously, unbuttoning her suit and sliding her stockings off, perched on the edge of the kitchen table. "Well, if it shits anywhere, I'm killing it."

"I didn't complain when you kept spiders! Ugh." Natsuki shivered, remembering the tank that Nao used to have in the study full of hairy arachnids. Fortunately, they'd all eaten each other within a couple of years, and there hadn't been time enough to get new ones. She pressed a couple of buttons to get the microwave going before pouring out some dog food that she'd stolen from Mrs. Johnson, the batty lady on the ground floor. She'd seen Duran when Natsuki was bringing him up from the basement earlier and insisted that Natsuki come in and talk to her. She owned six dogs herself and was curious as to what breed Natsuki's was. Thankfully, it had turned out that Duran also had his own anti-human detection power, because Mrs. Johnson had only seen one head. On the way out, she'd pikey'd a small bag of food (Mrs. Johnson was as good as blind), just until she could get to PetCare and buy some more. Natsuki wasn't very good at feeling guilty any more.

"Duuuuran!" She whistled for him, and the little pup came bounding out of the airing cupboard, where she'd set up a makeshift bed for him, three tongues lolling out of his cute little mouths. "Aww, who's a good boy! Who knows his name already!"

Nao called through from the kitchen. "I swear you're about five years old, Natsuki."

"And you're an old woman already!" She shouted back, stroking Duran's glossy fur. "Ignore Nasty Nao, Duran. She doesn't understand how special you are."

He barked and tucked into his food, letting Natsuki get back to the rapidly heating prawn curry. Her phone buzzed in her pocket as she was spooning some out of the plastic container into a bowl. "Ohh."

"Who's that?" Nao asked absentmindedly, stripped down to her underwear, stretching out like a cat about to curl up to sleep. "Loverboy?"

"Who, Kenta?"

"Your slightly cadaverous sweetheart, yes."

_Slightly cadaverous? I lol at your understatement, Nao. _Natsuki shook her head, reading the text.

_**Dearest Natsuki, **_

_Who begins a text with 'dearest Natsuki'?_

_**Shizuru here.**_

_Ah. Makes sense._

_**Wondering if you could meet me in the morgue after work today.**_

_Hot Date._

_**I understand you've been looking into some murders.**_

_Maybe not._

_**I believe I could help.**_

_You probably can, seeing as how you're the president of evil and stuff._

_**Xxxx Shizuru**_

Natsuki set the phone down on the counter, pensive. Four kisses. How many should she text back with? This had never been her strong point. Quite aware that Nao was dangerously close, she texted her reply and slipped her phone into her pocket. "That was Chie. She wants to go out for dinner tonight, to celebrate some important date."

"Tonight? Oh, fuck, it's like four in the morning, isn't it? Dunno if I can be bothered to sleep." A grin spread across Nao's face, one that Natsuki knew too well. _You only live once. _She thought, replying with a demure blush of her own.

Some hours later, the prawn curry lay forgotten on the counter, and Duran the dog was wondering what on earth those two strange creatures were getting up to in that room.

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><p>Usually the one making the judgments, Shizuru found it almost impossible to sit on the council that day. Her lapse of control was a complete secret- so, naturally, each and every council member knew. She felt a hypocrite, to make laws and decisions in the interest of protecting humans when she'd gone and murdered a dozen last night.<p>

_At least there is hope. _She thought, shuffling papers about as they changed topics. After doing a bit of ferreting about of her own, she'd found out that Natsuki was trying to investigate a slew of elf murders and assaults that had been largely overlooked by other people, but was getting nowhere. The siren couldn't help but feel that whatever laid at the end of Natsuki's investigation tied into not only the secret that Reito was keeping from her, but also the growing discontent amongst the Otherworlders. _I shall have to put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak._

"What do you think, Shizuru?" Armitage asked bluntly, reveling in punching Shizuru out of her reverie. The siren looked down and quickly scanned the brief with her eyes.

"I think it best to allow the incursion to slide." She said, voice hollow.

"You would, eh?" Someone muttered from her left. All eyes snapped to Savaros, Lord of the Night, the sallow-skinned vampire king. He was a known supporter of Fr. Greer, whose followers opposed the Recession and constantly pushed on parliament to end their seclusion. Their promise was this: humans are fair game. Unwittingly, Shizuru had become his greatest supporter.

"If we could keep private matters out of the council, Savaros?" Thanatos drawled, not even looking up from his Sudoku. "Else I shall list every single human you've killed in order, and all of their relatives, too."

"So pious, Thanatos? Of course, your department is always running behind schedule, needless to say that it is in your interest to curb human deaths."

"Order-"

"We will never forget those who cheat death, Savaros." The death-god replied icily, referring to the vampires that slipped through the Underworld and back out the other side unnoticed. "You are so quick to discount humans, and yet you were one not so long ago."

"Order, please." Shizuru broke them apart with her ire. "Gentlemen, we are not here to squabble like children. In the council, all are equal and unbiased."

"But apparently we do not all have to follow the rules any more, Shizuru?" Savaros suggested, eyes sly. "If we do not talk about this now, it will sit as the elephant in the room and stymie debate."

"What is it Savaros is hoping to hear?" She asked pointedly, addressing him and all the assembled faction leaders. "That I wish to start a revolution? That I have had a change of face overnight? I will… I will gladly accept the repercussions for my actions as any other citizen would, but I refuse to have any political weight placed on my conduct."

Armitage frowned, interjecting, "Shizuru, you _are_ politics."

This elicited a chuckle from the council, agreeing with the Amazonian woman's frank observation. "While that may be true, Haruka does not perhaps appreciate the… instability of our electorate at present."

"And you, Shizuru, are of the opinion that divulging your little misdemeanor to the general public would be detrimental to its stability." Thanatos said, presenting her argument openly. "Would one not say that this is to your advantage?"

"I am not concerned with saving face, if that is what Thanatos is implying." Shizuru replied harshly, a headache threatening to explode behind her eyes. How dearly she wished to just shout at all of them and storm off like a teenaged girl. No, that would not do. She had played all of her cards already, and was at the mercy of the council. Perhaps she should bring Natsuki along to these meetings and ask her to shoot anyone who annoyed her. _That would be amusing. _

"Well, I for one am concerned with the president's behaviour. We all show great reserve so as to set an example, and she has broken this, whether the public know or not." Savaros grinned, showing his mouthful of sharp, white teeth. "She is of course the shepherd to our sheep, and I would not will that she lead them astray."

Reito spoke up from where he brooded silently in the seat next to Shizuru. "It is the opinion of the dragons that President Viola's actions are insignificant in the grand scheme of things."

"That's always the dragons' opinion." Armitage huffed, her muscles bunching under her skin. The Amazon was one of only a few surviving superhumans, and had led her small clan through thousands of years of hardships. She was perhaps a bit jaded and blunt to be a politician, but after centuries of wars with all sorts of peoples, she was the only woman of action you wanted about. _However much we have hated each other in the past, Haruka, I pray now that you say something stupid but brilliant. _The siren smiled at fond memories, namely the first time she'd met Haruka. The Amazon tribe had actually shot her down from the sky after hunting her for weeks during the time when Shizuru was just meandering all over the world, searching for others like her. She had very nearly been dinner, she remembered.

"I think we must all agree it wise not to publicly disparage Shizuru, in this case, owing to the political situation we find ourselves in." Thanatos said in the lull that followed Haruka's words. "Equally, however, I think it wise to revoke her hunting privileges."

A murmur rippled around the room as the assembled council members mulled this over. _Hunting priviledges… revoked? _Shizuru thought, appalled. _How on earth to they propose to stop me hunting? Unless Thanatos would have me under house arrest? _

"The Seat of the Woodlands would like to protest this decision." Ah, Shizuru loved to hear the quiet rasp of her favourite nymph in debate, though it wasn't often that she was the subject of the debate itself. Yukino cleared her throat and pushed her spectacles up her rather stubby nose, her small horns curled around her head almost invisible in her untidy hair. The Chief Commisioner's words were few and far between, but her seat covered such a large section of the population that her vote could change any debate.

"Yes, Yukino?"

"I would ask that Shizuru actually be given a chance to explain her actions?"

_Stick it to the man, Yukino!_

"You believe that she acted out of anything but hunger?" Savaros asked blithely, dark eyebrows raised. "Come back when you know what it feels like, brownie."

"Could we keep insults to a minimum?" Thanatos drawled, having finished his Sudoku and moved onto the Fuuka Gazette's cryptic crossword. Shizuru peered over his shoulder and whispered:

"14 across is 'Luftwaffe'."

"Thanks."

Savaros cleared his throat rather pointedly. "Well then, Shizuru?"

She bit her lip in an uncharacteristic show of nerves. "I could only say that the devotion of the churchgoers to their God called into debate the nature of human life in me… Whilst we may treat them as a food source, they have become the dominant species on this planet, and have forged a future for themselves despite the persecution they have endured. I suppose the siren in me did not accept this and wished to assert herself over them."

"The siren in you?" Savaros laughed. "Don't be so silly, Shizuru. You are a siren. There is no human side to you, or to any of us, any more. Everything we do, we do for ourselves, however thickly we veil it."

"Savar-"

"Hush." The vampire king commanded, standing up, his lean form radiating power. "Do you not see? We have allowed ourselves to become governed by a _fear _of humans. We are working by _their _morals. How can any of you say this is what is right for us? The relationship we have with them is hardly symbiotic. We have been hiding out in Asheol long enough. Can any of you deny that you would, if you could, live out in the open air? We are weak, pale creatures down here, pretending to be the predators when the humans truly control what we can and can't do. If we do nothing now, if we call Shizuru's actions 'uncharacteristic' and let them slide by, we are denying who we really are. We are built and bred to hunt humans. Let us regain our birthright before we are quashed all together!"

His voice echoed around the Basilicum, amplified by the explosive anger and energy that oozed out of him, radiating to the other council members. Shizuru recoiled at his openly displayed heresy. She wished, fervently, that this had never happened. She didn't want to be the conduit to a war, however much the prospect of an infinite supply of humans appealed to her.

What would Natsuki do? She too, surely, was fair game under what Savaros suggested. _But she is not my priority now._

"Order, please!" She lamely exclaimed. "Seat of the Vampires, you are not in order."

"Fuck order!" He roared, drawing himself up to his full shadowy mass, just a seething shape of blackness and teeth, the darkness that lurked within all of his kind. Shouts ran across the room, other council members standing up and drawing weapons. "It is the shared opinion of the vampires that it is without our fundamental rights to take as we please! And henceforth, we all shall!"

"Order-!"

"Sieze him!"

Chaos broke out at the council, but Savaros was already gone, flitting through the abundance of shadows that the dim lighting provided until he was out of reach. Shizuru found herself sitting down at the eye of the storm, a very important thought having occurred to her. _I've started the revolution._

"Order!" Reito's voice shook dust from the eaves. The arguing council members stopped in their tracks, the severity of his tone having made them feel like children misbehaving. "Take your seats!"

They glanced at each other doubtingly before slowly settling back into their places, sobered and in a state of muted panic. Reito nodded and turned his head to Shizuru. "Here the dragons step out, Shizuru. Good luck."

He disappeared too, leaving the council in an awkward silence before Shizuru cleared her throat, and, surveying her colleagues, stood up to speak, knowing full well that she had no right to. "It seems we have a rebellion on our hands. I deem it appropriate to activate emergency protocol, councilors. Please inform your respective factions that I will be implementing nightly protection patrols all around Fuuka. All Vampires are detain on sight. A statement will be issued shortly."

_Ara, that all happened very fast._

"Shizuru." Haruka addressed her with quiet passion. "Is this a civil war?"

"Would you like it to be?"

"Probably." She cracked her large knuckles with relish. "But I understand the solemnity of the situation."

"I think you mean 'severity', Haruka." Yukino said quietly from next to her, much to the chagrin on the Amazon, who had never been good with words. Learning so many languages during the course of one's life confused a person. Shizuru herself had a vast vocabulary in around forty languages, and a competent grasp of many others. Not that they would help her now.

"Whatever." The Amazon stood up and curtly bowed her way out of the Basilicum, hand on the hilt of her sword all the way. Shizuru watched her go. Why wasn't reality sinking in properly? She had always been one to take things very seriously, mull them over, consider them, and then provide a solution. That was why she was president. Now, though… _I've failed quite prodigiously. My lapse of judgment has started a war. Why couldn't I have been born as… I don't know, a seagull or something? Life would be much simpler. Seagulls don't have civil wars. Or do they?_

The siren quickly stopped her mind wandering and checked her pocketwatch. The hands read only a little past midday. Impressive. "You have your edicts. I expect full support from each seat in this undertaking. We cannot afford to let the wayward vampires destroy that which we have spent two millennia working towards."

Not that Shizuru hadn't helped rather a lot with that already, but hey, life goes on. She paced back into the chambers of the mouldy old Basilicum, making her way up to the belfry; a favourite hiding-place of hers. All over the city, the blanket of ignorance covered the population. Soon, as the council members hurried from their seats and send messengers out to their communities, the world would be ablaze. She checked her watch again. Six hours to sunset. Six hours until vampires tore the city apart, damn the consequences. She should be doing something, but what? The lurch from peace to war was a leap too far for Shizuru's tired mind. _I could sleep through the Blitz again at this rate._

_Or I could pay a premature visit to Natsuki. She must be on her lunch break now. Ara, she knows nothing of the capricious political climate I have stepped out of, into the clean normalcy of the hospital. Though I very much doubt she would enjoy thousands of drained corpses tomorrow morning._

Hopping off the tower, she unfurled her wings; glad to feel the air between her feathers again. Yes, Shizuru mused happily, the world was going up in flames, but she would go and warn Natsuki first. It was only proper.


	7. The Importance of a DT GCSE

_Hey guys! School, blah, blah, usual excuses. I'm pleased with this chapter; I got a lot done, and there was awesome action, and just general badassery. I hope you all enjoy it too, and thanks to all reviewers! I reply to every review that isn't anonymous, but I may miss some sometimes, don't be offended, it's my fault for being disorganized. Anyway, much love and enjoy!_

_Oh, and song for this chapter is Hole in the Head by the Sugarbabes. You'll see._

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><p><em>Glossary:<em>

_Harridan- _a strict, bossy, or belligerent old woman _: a bullying old harridan._

_Stupefacient- _(chiefly of a drug) causing semiconsciousness.

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><p>Chapter Seven: The Importance of GCSE Design &amp; Technology<p>

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><p>Seagulls squawked overhead, a particularly fat specimen diving out of the squabbling and landing to perch on the clean, white stone building below. Hopping around a bit, he found a window ledge with a gauzy curtain billowing idly about it and sat to rest, enjoying the clean evening breeze. Then, as damned luck would have it, he gave out a particularly loud, satisfied screech, breaking the quiet twilight silence that had settled around the docks. The last catch of the day was gone, leaving behind a slimy trail of fish guts (these, perhaps, were what attracted the seagulls. Either that, or they were, as Shizuru feared, in the midst of a civil war).<p>

Natsuki and her siren companion stood just out of the pool of light gathered at the foot of a streetlamp, the former smoking, the latter watching the dimness for any sign of their contact. Shizuru anxiously checked her pocketwatch again. Quarter to six, it read in its wonderfully tooled brass hands. Quarter of an hour until the city bell tolled the end of the human world.

"Would Natsuki please put that out?" Shizuru complained, a breeze pushing smoke into her face. It wasn't that she deplored the habit particularly, but the scent was disrupting her sense of smell, a vital tool in her repertoire. "Else I shall prohibit her from smoking at all."

The doctor snorted but did as she was told, tossing the half-finished cig off the docks into the water where it gave a tiny hiss before being borne away by the wavelets that lapped against the mortar pillars keeping the fixed jetty upright. "I don't see the world going up in flames, Shizuru."

"Ten minutes, my darling."

"Don't call me that." Natsuki huffed at the condescending term, one of many the siren had taken to addressing her with recently. She didn't appreciate being teased in the slightest. "And anyway, your people have got it covered, right?"

Shizuru frowned, looking out to the sea, where the last pink remains of the sun was being held onto by low lying clouds streak across the sky. "If, as I have ordered, every Seat but the Vampires have mobilized their armies, we should have sufficient cause to quell Savaros' forces. However…" The light changed in an instant as the clouds turned to grey, snuffing out the daylight. "It is my opinion that the Vampires will be… more successful than my colleagues believe. If they overwhelm us, chances are that the Council will have to vote on whether or not to Wipe the city."

"Wipe the city?" Natsuki asked, quite alarmed. That sounded painful. "Hold up there, Shizuru, nobody's going to be doing anything to my city."

"You are not at liberty to choose." The siren said impassively, but there was a touch of sadness in her voice. "If the vampires truly overwhelm us, the Elvish Mages will unite to form a impenetrable barrier around Fuuka and any affected surrounding areas. All humans within it will be disposed of, along with the dissident vampires that tried to start the war. After everything returns to normal, a new city will be built."

Natsuki blinked, opened her mouth to say something puerile, and then closed it again. _Okay, I just about have the scope of this. To stop a worldwide war, the Council will murder a city of humans. My city. My humans. Wait a minute… I'm human too. Shit._

"Of course, this could have been prevented." The siren sighed dramatically, her gaze dropping from the sky to her watch. "Four minutes."

"How?"

"If I had not been such a fool… but no, now I ponder it, Natsuki must understand that this rebellion was inevitable. I merely… well, I have set it into action faster than was prudent."

"Hold up again please." Natsuki said, anger slithering into her voice and demeanor, turning to face Shizuru. "_You _started this?"

In response, the siren look the newspaper clipping describing her deeds from the pocket of her coat and smoothed it open for Natsuki to read. "Shock church massacre stuns city… I don't understand, Shizuru, what does this have to do with you?"

"Natsuki is not so naïve, I think, to place me on a pedestal above my… lascivious kin."

The young doctor's face fell after a few seconds of working this out (Shizuru spoke the language with a curious amalgam of accents, gathered from around the world during two thousand years of travel), not quite remembering what lascivious meant and thinking that the siren had lapsed into ancient Greek or something. "You're just like the rest of them."

It wasn't a question, but Shizuru nodded distantly and answered anyway. "I have been so very good for such a long time, Natsuki. Last night was a mere slip of my self-control. Do you now understand the weight that is placed upon our actions? If I were somebody of less repute, Savaros would not have… well, there would be no need to do what we are doing now."

"Freezing to death?" Natsuki quipped, but her heart wasn't in it. Kenta had warned her about this, but she'd forgotten it, pushing it aside as bluster meant to disconcert her. So, Shizuru was the same as any of those fat-bellied vampires that she pushed back to Asheol every night, just… more reserved. Her hands balled into fists as the cutting crumpled and fell to the damp floor. Natsuki had been hoping, praying, that everything would come out good at the end. That the world really was a good place. And now… she glanced over at Shizuru, so tall, so stoic, so tragically beautiful, exactly like a Greek statue, waiting for life to be breathed into her. But beneath the surface, was she just another soulless consumer like the rest? Natsuki found it hard to believe but impossible to deny. She heaved a sigh and lit another cigarette, despite being asked not to. Shizuru, as though waiting for her to speak, paused. The two of them were in a strangely symbolic position: the yellow light of the streetlamp doused Natsuki, whereas Shizuru lingered in the shadows. A pitiful laugh rose and died in Natsuki's throat as she saw the siren's annoyed expression, and she almost offered Shizuru a drag, purely to spite her, but felt too… disappointed, she supposed, with how things had turned out. _I hadn't realized how much I relied on her._

Slowly, as though creating itself from the shadows, the figure of a man slunk forward, growing in height and power as he became visible. Shizuru gave him a once-over, her lips curling as he gave her a vampire's smile, showing this mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. His blonde hair was slicked back, showing off the large forehead he'd acquired from years of balding, and a tiny pair of pince-nez sat on his nose. "Shizuru, my dear."

"Mr. Smith." They shook hands quickly, though Smith seemed fond of formality and kissed the back of the siren's hand with a lingering gesture before stepping into the shadows again with her. "I'm thankful that you could come on such short notice."

"It is no problem." His voice dripped with sleaze. Natsuki immediately didn't like him. _Then again, the only thing separating him from Shizuru is good genes._

"Good. Are you joining your kin tonight?" She asked, eyeing Smith again, taking in the snappy state of his clothing. "Because I'd so hate to have to arrest you before the fun begins."

Smith chuckled and shook his head. "I'm far too valuable to arrest, hmm?"

"We shall see." Shizuru muttered cynically. "Now, to the business which makes you so valuable, Mr. Smith. Tell me of the Vampires and their plans."

"Frankness doesn't become you, Shizuru." He dared to say, greedy eyes shining through the dark. "But alas, business is business. Savaros had around three thousand vampires ready around the city, with orders to take what they like. I have already given your people a list of the concentration points."

"Three thousand? The figure is… perhaps an understatement."

"Of course it is. Savaros is no fool, he knows that I am traitor to his side now." Smith leered.

Shizuru pondered for a few moments before speaking again. "Very well. Now, tell me about elves."

"Ah, yes. The dead elves that the good doctor over there was so interested in." He gestured over to Natsuki, who glared at him. "Important people have been sniffing around for a while, looking for something. I believe- and this is in no way fact- that the elves are in possession of something that they jealously guard, and will not allow even your Councilmen access to."

"Bastard." Shizuru swore, so unlike her usual, composed self. She'd known that the council was fond of plotting, particularly Reito, but if they'd started killing citizens in their games, it had surely gone too far. "Do we know what it is?"

"A book of some description; you know the elves and their magic. For all I know, it could be a spellbook that has the power to end the world as we know it, though equally it could merely be the secret to eternal life that some wealthy goblin is looking for." Smith chuckled. "Not everyone is so long-lived as you or I, Shizuru."

The siren shook her head. "It isn't anything about that. Reito was definitely after information about something when he spoke to me of the 'thing'. I shall have to find this book."

"Good luck." Smith snorted. "If a black dragon can't even find out where it is, what hope do you have?"

His tone must have irritated her, because Shizuru scowled and dismissed the vampire traitor. "I shall call your debts paid, Mr. Smith."

"Pleasure." He bowed again, and then stood, eyes wide, gaze distant, his body juddering silently as Shizuru watched on. "Sh-fuc-nng!"

"I quite agree." The siren whistled at him forcefully, a single, piercing note that lanced through the air in front of her like a knife, striking Smith in the chest with force enough to knock him backwards, spasming. As Natsuki watched, horrified, blood began to seep out of his pores, his eyes and mouth, ears, nose, and god knows where else. The seizure took him all of a minute, and John Smith slowly decomposed before their eyes, his bones turning to a crumbled piles of shadows and ashes. Only his pince-nez were left on the ground where he had been. _Remind me never to piss Shizuru off properly._

"Could we go a couple days without all the killing?" Natsuki asked exasperatedly as a gust blew the ashes of John Smith across the pier.

"He's hardly dead." Shizuru snorted, picking up his glasses and examining them, amused. "Vampires have a nasty habit of hauling themselves back out of the Underworld, however often one destroys them. Mr. Smith won't have found it funny, though."

"Why do it then?" Natsuki asked, mystified. "Just 'cause you felt like it?"

"He will be indisposed for a few weeks at the most. I have saved him from the city's Wiping, and though he'll be going through hell in Tartarus for that time, he won't have been caught up in the destruction up here."

"Will the Wipe kill vampires?"

Shizuru suddenly whistled, and the flock of roosting seagulls that had been lingering about the docks fluttered into action, diving down to assembled in neat formation on the ground in front of the siren. Natsuki, somewhat perturbed by the heated glares of those beady avian eyes, coughed slightly into her cigarette with surprise. "Seagulls," Shizuru began with the air of a primary school teacher explaining something to a particularly dumb pupil, "Are the most loyal of avian servants. It is why we are at the docks."

"Right." Natsuki looked at the birds dubiously. "And…?"

"They tell me that fifty shadow-men are meeting in a wharf-house just around the corner." The siren said proudly, cooing at her seagulls as a mother would to her precious children. "These are my target, for now, and I hope you will help."

"I get to shoot shit?"

"Ara, if you must put it that way." Shizuru chuckled lightly at the human's exuberance at the thought of death. _We are not so dissimilar, Natsuki. Except that you do not eat those you shoot afterwards. _"The vampires meeting here should include Savaros and his lieutenants. If we can destroy the rebellion's core, we may yet not have to Wipe Fuuka."

"Happy days."

"Of course, it may also go terribly wrong."

"I love it when you're optimistic, Shizuru."

The siren gave her a mock-withering look but let the remark drop, pleased that at least Natsuki was talking to her, which was a vast improvement from considering whether to kill her on the spot with disgust or just shuffle away quietly. Shizuru was rather beginning to enjoy Natsuki's company, as it was: the doctor had none of the power or political danger that most of her conversation partners had. She could afford liberties with Natsuki that would cause uproar within the Council. _Not that I haven't taken one too many liberties already with my appetite. _

"Have your gun loaded with gold bullets." Shizuru warned as they left the safety of the streetlamp to pace towards the warehouse full of vampires. Natsuki stared at her, dumbfounded.

"How do I do that?"

"You are a scientist, Natsuki." Shizuru said exasperatedly. "It is the same as any other use of your armsman's brand; you must construct it in your mind and it will be there."

Natsuki glumly tried remembering the structure of a gold atom. A-level chemistry was a long way past, and she struggled, hideous memories of her perverted teacher flowing back into her mind freely. _Ugh. _Amongst some useless stuff about bond enthalpies and endless reams of organic chemistry, she pulled up a periodic table in her mind and began to shape a gold atom in her mind, and then multiply it into bullet form. "I could make serious money from this."

"The bullets disintegrate when you leave the immediate area." Shizuru explained, pulling her own firearm from under her coat, a surprisingly large machine gun. She saw Natsuki's look and grinned. "Did Natsuki think I was going to walk into a nest of hungry, revolutionary vampires with a sword or some such ancient thing?"

"Yes." The doctor said uneasily, creating her own guns (she'd found two, smaller handguns to be very effective) and then putting gold bullets in them. "Could I materialize stuff other than weapons with this thing?"

"Probably. I remember a couple of soldiers who used to turn their armsman's brands into irons and the like to iron their clothes, but that was a long time ago, and the steam iron did not exist."

"…You're so helpful tonight." Natsuki experimentally thought _whisk! _And one of her guns molded into a frying pan. Decent, she thought, considering that they were both kitchen utensils. _At least it wasn't a toilet plunger or something._

"Be ready." The siren's posture shifted to a more serious, battle-ready gait, one that spoke of years of war on foot, mounted, or even in the air. Natsuki felt suddenly quite unmatched. She'd taken Judo classes when she was a kid, but Shizuru had fought in two world wars. This thought took root in her head, and she had to ask:

"Did you guys choose who won the war?"

The siren's lips quirked. "Which one?"

"Second World War."

"That was not a good place in history for sirens." She mused as they padded around the wharfhouse. "Adolf Hitler having been the most famous of us, of course, though only a half-blood anyway."

"Wha?" Natsuki's entire understanding of history may have just been turned on its head.

"Of course. His oratory, as he was only half-siren, was infused with some of our power. His silver tongue got the better of him, though, as did his ambitions, and he decided, much like our vampire friends, that it would be better if Otherworlders were out in the open. That said, he was going to wait until he had conquered all the humans in Europe with his army before throwing the truth at them."

"And you… fought against him?"

"Of course. I have taken a French surname, Viola, for some time, and therefore felt that I should fight with my countrymen. That, and the council were against him, though I wasn't president at the time."

"Right. Phew." Natsuki had, for a wild minute, imagined Shizuru and Hitler going tag-team siren on Poland's ass. The thought disturbed her, but was slightly comical. "Watch it!"

She'd seen a gloomy figure out of the corner of her eye and pulled Shizuru behind a wall just as the vampire guarding the wharfhouse had turned around. The siren silently thanked her and motioned for the doctor to create a weapon with a silencer to take him out. Natsuki obliged, playing the role of sniper as she leaned around the corner to take him out with frighteningly good aim. _Score 1 for the Krug-ster!_

Shizuru gestured for them to move out, and Natsuki went back to her noisy, cool-looking guns, feeling eerily like she was starting one of those shooter games in the arcade section of a cinema, like Time Crisis. Perhaps, she thought with a smile, House of the Dead would be a more obvious choice. That thought cemented in her brain, Natsuki put another pound in the machine and got ready to shoot some zombies. Or vampires. Whatever.

Moving forward, the pair slunk between the shadows of the high-piled crates, the smell of fish quite overwhelming this close to the harbour. Seagulls regularly flew in and out, squawking to distract the guardsmen and to mask the thudding footfalls of the approaching duo. Natsuki had to take out two more with her sniper, and Shizuru had only hummed a terrifically sleepy tune for the third one of drop where he stood before cutting his head straight off his neck with a knife she'd whipped out of a holster under her coat. Natsuki was impressed. And scared.

With the rustling of wings, Shizuru gave a few beats that propelled her up on top of a couple of meters worth of crates, throwing a thin, knotted rope down fro Natsuki to clamber up behind her. She then saw the siren consider some angles in her mind before gesturing for quiet and hoisting Natsuki under her armpits, pulling them both onto the roof with a quiet clatter. The doctor's stomach turned, that having been her first experience of spontaneous flight, but soldiered on as she and Shizuru crept across the corrugated iron roof towards a small ladder that went down to an rusted emergency door on the far side. They opened it with a vomit-prompting creak, only just enough for Natsuki to fit. Shizuru, being taller and possessing a classically curved physique, had even more trouble, but managed it in the end. They found themselves on a tiny platform in the musty back storeroom, far above the floor, but it was far too dusty in here for Shizuru to get her wings out, so they had to stick to the tiring and friction-burn-ridden process of using the knotted rope to climb down. Natsuki saw when she was at the bottom that the stairs that should have led up to the door, which was a fire escape, had been prized off the wall a while ago judging by the state of disrepair that the building was in. Presumably the metal was more useful elsewhere.

_I wonder if my armsman's brand could make a flight of stairs… _Natsuki thought idly as they shuffled around for a way into the main building, trying not to sneeze as clouds of dust rose around everything they touched.

"Here." The siren whispered, tracing the outline of a bricked-up doorframe. "Try turning your brand into a soldering iron, or a laser- something hot that can melt us a small hole in this mortar."

_This is why GCSE Resistant Materials Design & Technology rocks! _She giddily fashioned her brand into any number of power-tools, stopping on something she'd once used but didn't know the name of that had a long, superheated metal attachment that slowly melted its way through things. After an agonizing five minutes, Natsuki had made two small peepholes, one for each of them, and was peering through hers quite tentatively.

"My dear, could you not have anticipated the distance we would need between each other?" Shizuru hissed as they rubbed shoulders again, Natsuki having made the holes quite close together through no fault other than exuberance with the device. "Natsuki has prickly arms."

"Shut up." She whispered back, trying to catch shapes in the gloom. "Is that the big boss man?"

Shizuru somehow followed her gaze to where Savaros stood on a raised dais of pallets, his dark eyes surveying the room. All about him, the vampires had a distinct air of power about them. At least forty, Natsuki thought, counting heads. There was no way that she and Shizuru with a machine gun and quite possibly a frying pan if Natsuki got it wrong again were going to be able to take them down. "Yes, that is Savaros. Next to the dais, at the front, are three key lieutenants; we on the council call them the Rice Krispies."

"…" Natsuki raised an eyebrow. "Snap, Crackle, and Pop? I hardly believe you."

"Savaros has not let us learn their real names. It was that or Charlie's Angels."

"I shotgun Cameron Diaz."

"Then I shall take Lucy Liu." Shizuru said.

"Poor old Barrymore does get left behind, doesn't she?" Natsuki noted as they continued to spy on the vampires. "Ooh, I see movement."

Indeed, the vampires who had been milling around were now gathering in an orderly semi-circle around Savaros, who had cleared his throat, no doubt about to spout some crap about vampire birthright or the inferiority of humans. Natsuki, who had not heard him speak much before, listened intently to his spiel, becoming more and more angry. Sure, when Shizuru spoke blithely of killing humans, it seemed deplorable and all the rest, but these guys took it to a new level. She almost formed a sniper to take him out there and then, but Shizuru's soft hand stopped her. "You cannot kill him, Natsuki."

"Aww." She stopped and huffed for a while. "Then what _can _we do?"

"Ara, Natsuki thinks I come so unprepared?" Shizuru giggled uncharacteristically, pulling a strange grenade from one of her coat's thousands of inside pockets. "Ultraviolet light grenade. Vampires are creatures of the shadows, and therefore when the sun is up, they have limited power. Now, to practically transport an imitation sun into their midst… that will force them into the very edges of the room, where the shadows dwell, and even then there will not be enough room for all of them. I daresay we could take… thirty-odd out with one grenade."

"Do you have an atomic bomb under there too?" Natsuki quipped, but looked enviously at the little grenade. "If only they'd have used these early on in the Twilight series, all the vampires would be dead and there wouldn't have to be any more books."

"Natsuki should not say such things." Shizuru said, but smirked nonetheless. "I believe that the time to strike is soon. Shield your eyes from the grenade, lest it blind you, and try to take out as many vampires with corporeal bodies as possible. Leave Savaros to be, but you may wreak whatever havoc you have kept boiling in you on the Rice Krispies."

"Aight." Natsuki loaded her weapons and tensed herself, remembering what she was here for. _Stop the death of millions of humans. Save the city. Prevent the Wipe. Gotcha. _Shizuru nodded once, then gestured to the door a few paces away, a horrid metal contraption that had replaced the one that had been bricked up. They moved silently across to it, Shizuru's siren hearing assessing the right time to go. Once a round of muted cheering went up, she decided to strike, reflexes lightning-quick. She primed the grenade and counted down before kicking open the door with a mighty thud and throwing it with pinpoint accuracy into the very centre of the group of vampires. They all turned towards the disturbance, stupidly, and Shizuru just turned away when an almighty pulse of energy seemed to course about the room, lighting the whole interior up a blinding light. Shizuru burst from the door, Natsuki a second behind, and they opened fire, Shizuru with a wild spray of bullets from her machine gun, Natsuki with short, accurate shots from her handheld weapons. The doctor's sharpshooting took two stumbling, blind vampires out, and she then rounded on a third, shooting him once in the head and a second time in the heart, her blood pounding in her ears.

A couple of vampires who had just looked away in time began to gather their wits and reach for their own firearms, but Shizuru was on them like a teenaged girl on a boy-band member, mowing them down with the deafening rattle of her gun. One of the lieutenants fired a couple shots their way, but Natsuki rolled to one side and hid behind a couple of large sacks full of sand as they whizzed past her, desperately trying to remember how to form gold again. Before she could, with a great single wingbeat, Shizuru came crashing down next to her, a large gash in her shoulder where a vampire had managed to clip her. "Aim for the lieutenants. Here."

She thrust a second armsman's brand onto Natsuki's finger, this one hotter and a slimmer band, though chunkier in design. "It is a shield to deflect bullets while you shoot; go, I must deal with Savaros."

Shizuru lifted off again, darting left with a great swerve to avoid a scattering of bullets that met her before opening fire on the remaining group of vampires. Natsuki formed a large, very thick metal shield and poked her head out of the side, glad that the siren occupied them. She took another two men out, but soon enough Savaros had identified Shizuru and was glaring at her with a seething, shadowy face. The two council members clashed in the sky, Savaros borne upwards on a swelling wave of darkness, his body twisted and coiled, maw gaping with fangs the size of ice-lollies. Shizuru whipped a hand-and-a-half blade from nowhere and danced around him, firing some superfluous shots that his shadowy body seemed to squirm around and avoid easily. With a swift, darting blow, the siren rounded on his with a beat of her great wings and screeched, her face for a brief moment losing all of its beauty and forming a terrible frieze. Natsuki felt all of her courage blown out of her by that screech, and her hand trembled as she shot at one of the Rice Krispies, who, shaken as she, fired back a few off-target bullets. Shizuru's voice was a terrible thing; it sapped the life out of people, and however lovely it was when she wanted it to be, the siren was a creature of evil. Natsuki ducked back under cover to strengthen her resolve.

_Be calm, Natsuki. You can do this. There's only a couple left._ She peeked out again to see the remaining lieutenant barking something to his fellows as they grouped together, taking their attention off the dance in the sky and coming straight for where she was hidden. _What do I need? Think, you stupid doctor, what kills lots of people fast? Binge Drinking, impure drugs, MRSA… None of them are going to come in useful! _She examined her shield, an idea forming in her head. If she could combine her firearm and her defense, she could hold them off enough.

A shield-gun. Yeh, Natsuki thought, a big grin on her face. She couldn't hold the weight long, but watch that baby go. She stepped out and took aim, the body of the round shield protecting her arms and upper body as she took aim and shot two of the vampires down. The lieutenant, whom she had decided was Crackle, answered with a couple of shots that bounced off her shield, one zooming over her head. Rats. She tried another round, but they were getting close, her aim not good enough without decent vision of her assailants. Switching tactics, Natsuki pulled herself behind the bags again and thought on her feet, dashing around the other side of the heavy sack just as they were approaching her position. "Over here!" She jeered at them, and the nightwalkers immediately snapped their heads, and their guns, over to where she was making a dash for a stack of shelves.

"Fucking bitch!" Crackle spat, reloading and observing her movements. "Come out and face us, cowardly human scum!"

"Okay." Natsuki said simply as the vampires got within distance, ready to gun her down as soon as they got behind the shelves. She stood smugly with a flamethrower-shield, and when they peeked around her ran at them full force, burning a couple of noses off. Crackle got a shot off, and Natsuki felt a hideous, lancing pain shoot up her left leg like water up the xylem of a plant. She gasped with the pain, her limb giving way as she fell on her knees, unable to stand up. Scrunching her eyes shut her quelled a wave of nausea and formed a gun before he could reload, shooting him twice between the eyes. He slumped almost on top of her before breaking down into the pile of shadowy dust that his race were made of. Natsuki, jaw clenched and body shaking and spasming from the pain of actually being shot at pretty close range, collapsed against the shelves, eyes wide as Shizuru continued her skirmish above.

The two immortals were not evenly matched from the beginning; Shizuru was still heavy and slightly hazy from her feeding the previous evening, and only her wits were keeping her in the fray. Savaros was powered by the strength of revolution and the sharpness of hunger. He was wont to scheming in the shadows, and would not see his dream fall to ashes at he clutched at it finally. Shizuru was older, and more skilled, but already wounded. She parried with her hand-and-a-half sword against a much wickeder scimitar wielded by Savaros, who was also getting in a couple of shots when he could, one of which had lodged itself in Shizuru's foot, tearing through the boot she was wearing. The siren took the offensive and lunged forward with a quick riposte, sensing the opening provided when Savaros went for his gun, and nicked his shoulder, but the vampire just chuckled, bringing more shadows around himself to reform the flesh, perfect and white. Natsuki's eyes widened; there was no way Shizuru would win this. She looked around desperately for some means of having them both escape. She briefly considered creating a torch and shining it at Savaros, but doubted the help it would be. _We were stupid to go in here alone. Does Shizuru have a death wish?_

Maybe she was just very loyal to the council, but Natsuki didn't believe that. Shizuru's sudden passion had just sprung out of nowhere when the fighting began; the siren was usually a very level, languid person. Perhaps, Natsuki thought with a twinge of self-importance, she wants to prove to me that she isn't a monster by defeating a more monstrous person than herself (if that was possible). Then again, did Shizuru care about Natuski's opinion of her enough to risk her life? Unlikely. The doctor shook herself out of introspection, remembering that there were more pressing matters at hand.

But how to defeat a creature that was made from shadows? There was no way, she decided with simple human logic and a Physics A-level. So they'd have to escape intact. For a selfish moment, Natsuki considered leaving Shizuru to her eventual death at Savaros' hands, but decided that, in the current political climate, she needed the siren by her side. _By my side. Lord, I sound like some kind of knight errant deciding to rescue a princess. _

That decided, she hauled herself up with the help of the shelves, her leg throbbing and useless, leaving a slick pool of blood on the floor. The doctor grimaced, thinking that she desperately needed to operate on herself. The Hospital was on the other side of town; there was no way that she could get herself and Shizuru there. She grabbed a broom that was leaning against the wall amongst assorted cleaning paraphernalia and ripped the bristles off, leaving a makeshift crutch that she could use to get around with. All around, piles of dust littered the floor, along with the occasional twitching corpse of a mortally wounded vampire. Shizuru and Savaros were crashing viciously against each other in the air and on the ground; one of the siren's wings had taken a fearsome cut and she was struggling to stay aloft, often landing on the floor or on crates and propelling herself upwards for the next bout instead of staying in constant flight.

"Fuck." She muttered under her breath, making a slow, labouring way to the main set of double doors, her leg sending deep, hacking pains into her every step she took. "Never again, you stupid siren!"

Dropping all pretenses, Natsuki charged at the door, all stealth abandoned. Yanking the rusty old thing open with muscles that didn't exist, she created a decent space through which Shizuru could escape, if she flew fast enough. The siren saw what she was doing and with a great burst of energy, lashed out and cut Savaros's sword from his hand. It would reform, but the siren launched herself off the back wall and flew with jarring speed through the open doors, snatching Natsuki's hand as she did so, lifting them both in a great arc through the sky, beyond the docks, slingshotted all the way into the harbour. They slammed down with a crash of splinters on a fishing tow, sending the small vessel rocking violently to and fro.

"He cannot leave the city." Shizuru panted, pulling herself up and looking around in the dark. "We'll sail past the harbour bounds; he'll have to leave us alone."

_What a dubious plan. _"All right."

Picking a splinter the size of a fountain pen out of her arse, Natsuki found herself pulled up into the air again, landing with aplomb on a smaller, but more expensive looking powerboat. "Does Natsuki know how to drive a boat?"

"Nope, but there's a first time for everything." Natsuki hopped into the captain's cockpit and began to fiddle with the controls. _Another strike for Resistant Materials DT GCSE._ She formed her armsman's brand into a small flat piece of metal, inserted it into the ignition, then expanded it, creating a key, quite impressed with herself. The boat's engine gave a great roar as she started it up, Shizuru yanking the anchor up with great heaves up on deck. Natsuki whistled 'what shall we do with the drunken sailor' merrily as she put the boat into gear, teeth gritted with pain and glee as it shot forward, sending Shizuru splashing into the water with a cry of alarm. The siren, soaked and thoroughly unamused, grabbed a hold of the side and hauled herself back on board, cursing a couple of sea gods in Greek. "Sorry!"

She heard something that sounded dangerously like: 'Natsuki will be' before they sped out of the harbour and into the open ocean. Natsuki admired the grace and speed of the stolen speedboat by taking her for a hair-raising ride, secretly quite hoping to throw Shizuru off again but failing as the siren caught wind of her plans and retired belowdeck.

As night fell in earnest, a deep, dark curtain of blue drawn across the sky, smattered with tiny stars, Natsuki's adrenaline began to run dry and she realized quite what a state she was in, and quite what a state Shizuru must be in too. She stopped the boat near an islet and weighed the anchor with great trouble; her mother had rarely gone to sea, and when she did it was not with good humor. Rummaging around for a while, she found the boat's medical supplies and limped belowdeck like a real pirate, _sans _parrot.

"Fuck!" She hissed as she found a light switch, nearly slipping in a pool of blood that covered the floor. In the small kitchen area, Shizuru's body was splayed out over the table, as though she'd collapsed there immediately. Her eyes were open but glassy, barely blinking. Her wings cluttered the cabin, brushing blood onto the walls, and she clutched her side in agony, hands pressed against a large wound, blood spilling bfrom between her fingers in crimson waterfalls. "You're stupid, Shizuru! All this time you didn't call out… fucking headstrong otherworld harridan!" she pursed her lips and started taking supplies out, her stomach sinking. She hoped that Shizuru's powers of recovery were excellent; else there wasn't much hope for either of them.

"Y…you… Natsu…ki, fi-…first." The siren wheezed as Natsuki tried to turn her over to inspect the wound. "I… I heal-…fa-a…st."

"Yes, you're in such a good state already." Natsuki spat sarcastically. "You really do want to die, bird-woman. Eesh, stay still."

"Na…ts… impor-..t…tant…" The siren's eyelids fluttered as she wavered in and out of consciousness. "Sav…said…Ei…d…lo-"

"Shut up." Natsuki said as the other woman finally slumped into a healing sleep, allowing the doctor to do what she did best. _I wish I was Chie. She's in A&E at the moment. _Natsuki frowned. _Probably doing a million and one blood transfusions, if Shizuru's reinforcements aren't successful. Right, let me remember what they said I med school about patching up sirens. Oh wait; there wasn't a chapter on that._

She set to work, swabbing and disinfecting, stitching and bandaging. "I suppose it's silly to ask what blood type you are?" She said rhetorically to the unconscious siren while checking for broken bones. Luckily, apart from some fractured fingers, Shizuru was for the most part free of terrible injuries now; the bullet in her foot had passed out of the other side and all there was to do was stop the bleeding as much as possible. Only time would tell if she'd lost too much blood.

"Now…" Natsuki hobbled onto the steps that led down to the kitchen and pulled the kit towards her. "Let's get a look at this bad boy."

She took the scissors and clumsily cut off her trousers around the blood-caked entry hole. She had no idea where the bullet was, but by the range she'd guess it was pretty far in. This was not going to be fun. How often did one have to pull a bullet from one's leg? Switching to a thinner, longer pair of scissors, she bravely sterilized them on her lighter before probing into the hole left by the bullet. A pain unlike anything she'd ever known exploded in her leg, making her hands spasm on the scissors, but she gritted her teeth and went through with it, touching the small projectile, then labouriously enclosing it with the scissors and slowly pulling it out, blood sputtering from the wound all the while. She was lucky not to have hit a major artery; else she'd be swimming with the fishes.

With a startled cry, she finally yanked the bullet out and hastily covered the wound with a factory's worth of dressing. "Fuck six years of training, there's no kick up the ass quite like getting shot."

Aware that she was talking to herself, Natsuki shut up and went about bandaging and administering some painkillers. She immediately discounted paracetamol and the like, looking at least for something codeine-derived, but of course you weren't allowed that in normal first aid kits. The thought of drugs jogged her memory and she reached nervously into the inside lining of her coat, for a small plastic bag containing some dubious otherworld drugs that she'd picked up during various sorties around Asheol. If she could find a particularly stupefacient one, perhaps she could relieve her pain; though there was the danger of having to navigate possible oncoming danger whilst stoned off her face. In the end, the mounting, throbbing pain in her leg and general lack of energy guided her hand and she downed a pill of some description. With not long until the extremely potent drug took effect and either sent her into a painless stupour or a blackout, Natsuki checked the boat was secure, wrote Shizuru a brief note and laid herself down in one of the small berths, wishing she'd never met the siren in the first place.

Of course, the night was only beginning.


End file.
